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As the Stars of Outlander Begin Their Long Goodbye, the Cast of Outlander: Blood of My Blood Is Just Getting Started

By Reshma Gopaldas

August 4, 2025

Outlander’s Sam Heughan, Sophie Skelton, and Richard Rankin with Outlander: Blood of My Blood’s Harriet Slater, Jamie Roy, and Hermione Corfield on Day 2 San Diego Comic-Con. The latter series premieres on August 8.Photo: Joe Scarnici/Getty Images

Jamie Fraser was just a man in a kilt in Diana Gabaldon’s head when she decided, some 35 years ago, to try writing her first novel. That book would become Outlander, its story centered on Claire, a war nurse in 1945, and Jamie, a Highland warrior in the 1700s.

Now, more than a decade after Caitríona Balfe and Sam Heughan first brought Claire and Jamie to life in Starz’s beloved television adaptation of Gabaldon’s historical-fantasy series, fans are preparing for the show’s eighth and final season to air in early 2026. But the Outlander story will continue on with a new prequel series, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, built around Jamie’s parents, Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) and Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy), and Claire’s parents, Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine), who are time-travelers just like their daughter. Premiering on August 8, it’s “the love stories that created the love story,” as Outlander showrunner and creator Matthew B. Roberts describes it.

As Vogue rode along with the casts of Outlander and Blood of My Blood for two days at San Diego Comic-Con in late July, the actors got a chance to talk legacy, family, and the Season 8 moments that made them cry.

Day one kicks off with the OG Outlander gang—Heughan, Sophie Skelton (Claire and Jamie’s daughter, Brianna), and Richard Rankin (Brianna’s husband, Roger MacKenzie)—jumping into hair and make-up at 6 a.m., then into cars headed to Hall H, the biggest venue at the San Diego Convention Center, with a capacity of 6,500 guests.

Of course, one crucial member of their group is missing—Balfe, who is in the UK filming Georgia Oakley’s new adaptation of Sense & Sensibility. (She will play Mrs. Dashwood.)

Caitríona Balfe and Heughan at San Diego Comic-Con in 2014 Photo: Getty Images

“The show isn’t the show without Caitríona. She’s such a strong force and such an amazing human being,” Heughan tells me in the green room before their panel. “She’s sorely missed. It’s a nice family reunion. We’ve had these moments, since we finished, where we met up—most recently, at Richard’s wedding. Everyone was dancing. It was wonderful. It was the first time we’d all kind of been together since wrapping properly.” (He adds that he was “delighted” when he learned about Balfe’s Sense & Sensibility casting. “I think we started doing really bad impressions of previous versions of Jane Austen. But she’s brilliant. I know she will bring something very different to that role. But Caitríona’s in a corset again. She’s wished it on herself!”)

“Caitríona and Joey”—as in Phillips, another member of the cast—“were having a great time,” Rankin agrees. “Everybody brought their A-game.” An Outlander wedding with dancing and no drama? Imagine.

Foto: Araya Doheny/Getty Images

Heughan, Skelton, Rankin, executive producer Maril Davis, and Roberts soon gather for a pre-panel group-hug-slash-huddle, which has become something of a ritual. Then, they take the stage for a conversation moderated by comedian Aisha Tyler. It ends with a teaser trailer for Season 8, as well as a live performance of Outlander’s main theme, the 19th-century Scottish ballad “The Skye Boat Song,” by Raya Yarbrough.

What was it like, I ask Heughan later, to watch a trailer with upwards of 6,000 fans? “Probably my favorite trailer I’ve seen, because there’s so much material going back through all the seasons,” he says. “It makes you realize how much we’ve done, how much drama there’s been, how much adventure and romance. It’s pretty epic. It really was one of those pinch-me moments. It’s the beginning—and it’s the end of that chapter.”

Heughan and Matt Roberts’s selfie from the Comic-Con stage Photo: Sam Heughan

Did anything make him emotional? I wonder. “The scene from Season 1, where Jamie first captures Claire, where he has his sword and we’re sort of covered in blood… That was probably one of the first major scenes we did,” Heughan says. “That one, for me, was just sort of iconic. I was like, ‘Oh, we look good. We look young.’”

Skelton and Slater, who plays Brianna‘s paternal grandmother, Ellen, on Blood of My Blood Joe Scarnici/Getty Images

Two weeks into filming, Slater had a “really lovely phone call” with Balfe about joining Outlander’s heady universe. “She chatted to me for an hour on a Sunday, which was so great. It was just so welcoming and supportive. Her main piece of advice was just to enjoy it and really soak it all in. She said, ‘Nobody else is going to know what this is really like on the inside, only you guys are. So, just stick together.’” (This, Skelton tells me, is characteristic of Balfe: “In our industry, it’s sometimes very hard to have women supporting women. It’s talked about quite a lot, but people don’t always put their money where their mouth is. And I will say that Caitríona has been a huge support.”)

Roy shares that he got similar guidance from Heughan, who told him, “It goes by so quickly. There are days where it’s going to be rough, but you just have to step back and appreciate it. Slow down and enjoy it.”

Another Heughan selfie, now with members of the Blood of My Blood cast, including Rory Alexander, Jamie Roy, Richard Rankin, Sam Retford, Harriet Slater, Seam McLean Ross, and Hermione Corfield Photo: Sam Heughan

For the Outlander gang, Comic-Con weekend is bittersweet. “I feel like I could cry now,” Rankin says, thinking back to watching Balfe and Heughan shooting their final scene. “We just felt like we wanted to be there. What we didn’t know is that it was a closed set. There were 100 of us just all standing around, waiting for Sam and Caitríona to wrap because it was the last shot. I definitely welled up.”

“It was a seven-and-a-half-minute take, a ton of dialogue, very intimate. And, obviously, you know that all the crew were there—you could feel the tension,” Heughan remembers. “I did my close-up first, and I was just trying to get through it, to be honest. I think I sort of shut down internally. I could see Caitríona getting more emotional. I think it was her eyebrow or her cheek—something was twitching the whole way. Then we wrapped and walked out, and everyone was there. They called a wrap on it and I was crying. There were tears in our eyes. Caitríona was a mess—she was proper, I think she said, ‘ugly crying.’ I was very emotional as well. It was exhausting—but also wonderful.”

Skelton shares that Balfe was there for her own final scene. “I saw that she was behind the camera with the crew, waiting to clap and wrap me out. She was the first person I went over to. I hadn’t had any tears until then. But she was quite teary, and her being teary got me teary. We were just crying off each other’s tears. I took my wig off, she sat with me, we had a little toast in the makeup trailer. Then we went to where Sam was doing his final scene. They said, ‘That is Sam wrapped on Outlander forever.’ Those are very big words to hear. There was just a sea of people clapping, and he just sort of parted a path and found me and Caitríona, and the three of us had a big hug. We all had a little cry.”

Skelton gets choked up. “As we walked back to base, somebody said into the radio—and I’m getting goosebumps now—‘That’s the three of them back at base, for the last time.’ And that made us just break down.”

Even now, Heughan is still processing it all. “Recently, I drove past the studio. I knew that they were there shooting Blood of My Blood, and I felt sad. I thought, Oh, everyone’s at work and I’m not. It does feel quite hard.”

Can we expect him to make a cameo, perhaps as baby Jamie? I ask. “No, I don’t think so,” he replies with a laugh. “I might need a little help with that!”

After more than 11 years together, Heughan says that he and the rest of the Outlander cast are forever bonded. “I think it’s kind of evident, even over this weekend, [how] we just sort of fall back into our silliness a little bit. They really are not just friends. They’re family. I haven’t seen Caitríona as much—we’ve met up a couple of times—but it’s just so nice, because you suddenly realize you know this person extremely well, and you can kind of share anything with them. I know that we’re all going off in our own directions, but that bond will always be there.”

As for what’s next for Heughan, he’ll be on the stage, playing Macbeth at the Other Place—the Royal Shakespeare Company’s intimate theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon—this fall. “It’s a return to my roots,” he says, “and I now need to go learn the lines.” Talk about the start of a new chapter.

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Some of you guys know that the original @pharosathleticclub was built on a the blueprint of Movie Prep work idone for @gymjonessalvation with @andyhorwitz. My brain was dialed in to the programs, equipment and protocols I would need to create the best transformations in the shortest amount of time. The vision has evolved over the years but @pharospalmsprings is my best shot at the title. I had my friend @samheughan come and test it out with me. Plenty of fitness, plenty of fun, plenty of recreation. A space to build good things.... Bodies, mindset, relationships, community... this endeavor is what throws fuel on my flame.

Thanks to all of you who made this fantasy land a reality, who believed in us, supported us gave your time, your hands and your words of encouragement. Thanks to Sam for taking the time and cheers to the many great sessions here and in all PHAROS locations. We built this thing together and I'm proud of what it has become thanks to you all.

Article 4 June 2025

'Outlander' Creators Reveal Season 7 Secrets And Why Jamie & Claire's Love Scene Had to Change

Go behind the kilts in this exclusive Consider This Conversations panel with the creative minds behind Outlander Season 7. Executive Producers Maril Davis and Matthew B. Roberts, Production Designer Mike Gunn, and Costume Designer Trisha Biggar join IndieWire to break down the most emotional, ambitious, and surprising moments of the penultimate season.

From filming multiple endings to rewriting Jamie and Claire's passionate reunion, the team gets candid about adapting Diana Gabaldon's beloved novels and honoring the show's central love story - while keeping fans on their toes.

Plus: an epic tease for the series finale and insight into the upcoming prequel, Outlander: Blood of My Blood.

EXCLUSIVE: Outlander star Sam Heughan will star as the murderous tyrant in Macbeth, marking his debut with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he tells Deadline that returning to the stage for the first time in 12 years "is the drug I'm looking for."

The actor, who has cropped his locks for the role, says it's "exciting" to be treading the boards again now that filming is compete on the eighth and final season of the time-traveling drama Outlander, in which he plays the the dashingly charming Jamie Fraser who finds true love with Claire, played by Caitríona Balfe.

During our conversation, Heughan suggested that Starz will show season 8 of Outlander "towards next year." The prequel series Outlander: Blood of My Blood premieres on August 8, "so I feel it'd probably be out next year," he reveals.

Macbeth, to be directed by Daniel Raggett, will begin performances at RCS' The Other Place studio venue in Stratford-upon-Avon on October 9, running through December 6.

Lia Williams, the distinguished, classically trained thespian, will play Lady Macbeth. She's also a prominent presence on TV, having appeared as Wallis Simpson in The Crown and as Isabel Kirby, the duplicitous MI6 British intelligence service deputy chief of staff in Peacock's hit The Day of the Jackal.

"I was looking for something that would really excite me. I've been doing Outlander for 11 years, and obviously it was brilliant, but I wanted something else,” says Heughan. "And I went to the RSC to see Edward II there, and I just felt that buzz. I sat in the auditorium and I felt that excitement, sort of the churn in my stomach as the lights went down and I was like, 'Yeah, this is the drug I'm looking for.' And it's terrifying. And I think that's a good thing to be scared again."

The last time Heughan was on stage was in Batman Live, where he played the Caped Crusader in uncomfortably snug tights.

He says the show "was not quite Shakespeare or the RSC, but it was an international tour going all around from the whole of UK and Europe to the U.S. We did Las Vegas, we played in Bueno Aires and the O2 in London hanging upside down, wearing PVC."

Merrily, he quips: "I dunno, maybe there'll be a bit of that in Macbeth as well. You never know."

Completing work on the Outlander series presented the perfect opportunity for the actor to return to his stage roots.

"I think that's it," he agrees.

The actor trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now called the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. "I did a classical theater training, and I built my career on theater. That's what I did way before I got any sort of TV jobs and trying to support myself in Scottish theater and then in London as well.

And it's obviously a dream. I remember just going full circle like, going back to the very first show I ever did in youth theater. I was an extra on the main stage of the Royal Lyceum theatre in Edinburgh in a production of Macbeth. And for me it's The Scottish Play [for superstitious reasons, thespians often refer to Macbeth by that title] obviously, but it's a play that's super-exciting. It's one of his shortest. It's bloody. It's got some incredible writing and some really fascinating character at the center of it. And I just remember being in the library as a drama student, reading books about various famous actors playing that role."

Heughan remembers seeing Adrian Noble's RSC production of the play touring Scotland with Derek Jacobi in the title role "and just being in awe of them and dreaming that one day I'd be there."

The closest he got was playing the roles of Malcolm, a soldier and a "murderer" as the program note lists it, opposite Liam Brennan as the Thane who would be king, in a production that played the Royal Lyceum and Nottingham Playhouse in 2008, directed by Lucy Pitman-Wallace.

As a student, he watched the video version of Patrick Stewart essaying the once loyal and valiant general-turned-treasonous killer of a king in director Rupert Goold's celebrated production that played the West End and Broadway.

Importantly, he watched the thrilling filmed adaptation of Macbeth starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench. In 1976, Trevor Nunn had directed the play for the RSC at The Other Place, and it's now regarded as one of the greatest productions of The Scottish Play ever staged.

"The last people to do [Macbeth] in that theatre wwere Ian McKellen and Judi Dench," Heughan observes, "so we're very lucky."

There will be ghosts in that house, I suggest.

Heughan laughs but says in all seriousness: "There will be, and I hope we can draw upon their talent and their expertise."

The tragedy of Macbeth is that, upon hearing the three witches' prophecy that he would become King of Scotland, he becomes tyrannical and, with his wife's help, he murders the monarch who stands in his way. But is his missus to blame, or, I ask Heughan, am I being kind to Macbeth?

"What's so great about Shakespeare," he says brightly, "is that it can be read in many different ways and portrayed in different ways.

And you could say, 'Well, it's always been in him and he's an evil man and he wanted to do this.'

Or you could say that he is on this path that he's been set on by some supernatural powers or it's his ambition. Or in my case, I think perhaps it might be more that he loves someone so much and he wants to fulfill her ambition as well. But it's about making one decision and then the consequences of that, and he just can't get out of it and takes it way too far. But yeah, I mean, obviously he starts down this slippery slope and can't stop it and goes really far with it, but it's super-fascinating. I mean, we haven't started rehearsals yet, but we'll be looking at what is it that drives him and all of the superstition around it as well."

In terms of wrongheaded, misguided polices, I mention, mischievously, if the White House might be a suitable location for the play to be set.

"Yeah, again, I think it's the beauty of Shakespeare is you can always draw parallels, and that's why it's still so popular now. You can look at any country or anything that's going on anywhere and see that in the wrong hands, power corrupts. I mean, he really does shut everyone down and start to destroy anyone that can pose a threat to him. So yeah, I won't be playing it with a ginger wig or in a suit."

Or an overlong blue tie, I add wickedly.

"Well, you never know. Maybe I will," he responds wryly.

Actually, Heughan and Williams have had discussions with director Raggett about where to set it.

"We've been talking about lots of different ways of portraying it and whether that's, I feel, been done before. But you could set it the conflict in Ukraine or on the Russian border or whatever, or you could set it, as you suggested, in America right now. It could be kind of set anywhere. So we haven't fully decided, but I think we know which direction we're going."

We chatted during a break from a table read of the text. Just before our meeting in London, he got stopped by three Spanish tourists "and they were excited. I'm surprised they recognized me," he says, laughing, "because I've shaved my head for the role."

Explaining his rationale for the new look, Heughan says, "It's also about a new skin and a new me and new beginnings and shedding a bit of Jamie Fraser, though he was a wig as well. But I think it's an interesting look. Certainly I'm getting used to it."

When he saw Raggett's production of Edward II starring Daniel Evans, who's also the RSC's co-artistic director with Tamara Harvey, he says that he felt "that excitement and that fear that got me into theater and made me an actor in the first place. And I think that's what I want to do with this play. I want people to come to see Macbeth and be properly scared."

Working on Outlander for 11years, he says, "dominated" his life. "It becomes your life a hundred percent. And in some ways that's fantastic, and I've been very lucky. I've obviously been able to do some movies and TV shows and things, but it does define you and it also dictates where you live and what time you have and where you are in the world physically and where your energy goes. So this is really cool. It's a chance for me to sort of, I don't know, find out who I am again or where I was and see what the next step is. And it feels like home already going into Stratford-upon-Avon. ... It feels familiar and walking onto the stage and soaking that up. So it's a part of myself that I've perhaps had forgotten about."

Also, he adds that he feels proud as a native of Scotland to be playing a role that's associated with the country of his birth.

He's thrilled that the cast is "predominantly all Scottish actors." There's a great pool of talent in Scotland, he boasts, "and a great vibrancy and energy," adding, "I'm so excited to have this little bit of Scotland in Stratford-upon-Avon flying our flag."

Heughan also has announcements planned for his Sassenach Spirits brand. Perhaps he'll gift wrap a few bottles as first-night gifts for his cast mates.

There's also sadness with moving on from Outlander. He had lunch with Balfe last week. "It was so lovely to see her. She's obviously in London as well, and so we're all very, very close still and we're always sending each other messages and stuff. So that's, I guess, one of the great parts of our show. We really have this lovely friendship now, and I'm sure that we'll follow each other in subsequent years."

And he misses the crew too. "They're not just crew, they're family, they're friends now."

There's talk, he notes, of them doing Comic-Con "to sort of celebrate the prequel show."

And he's not ruling out the possibility of an Outlander one-off TV special in the future.

"Who knows?" he chuckles. "Who knows? I know they did that with Downton Abbey and others. So you never know. Maybe the ginger wig is still around somewhere."

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An Evening with Sam Heughan C2E2

I'm not sure if there is a public link up yet, so here is my recording of the panel with Sam. excuse the loss of a Sam View 13 or so minutes in. it's my shaky Camara work. I hadn't planned to record everything, so I'm setting up my tripod around then but after the picture is fairly sturdy and the best part is mics are used so there is decent sound once Sam and Steve are settled in.

I do hope you enjoy Special thanks to Melissa, who near the end, gets a question answered by Sam. Because of her, I was able to get into the meet and greet earlier in the day and get confirmation of the scams being, well.. scams.

Love to all!