Over a decade after landing the leading heroine role in the beloved time-travel series “Outlander,” Caitriona Balfe remembers that the first time she was set to meet Sam Heughan, who would become her on-screen husband for the eight-season run of the Starz show, she was stuck in L.A. traffic.
“There was roadwork or something, and I was kind of running late, and I walk into the room, and [Sam] was just such a kind, calm center, and he handed me a tissue because I was all sweaty,” Balfe told TheWrap. But none of that mattered once she and Heughan started reading as Jamie and Claire.
“It just was instantaneous,” Balfe added. “We got into the scenes and we had such a good chemistry together, and it was, I don’t know, there was just a natural flow between us.”
It was that same flow that Heughan, who was cast before Balfe, recalled from their chemistry read, which was welcome after he and the team had auditioned a number of actresses for the role of Claire. “There was a real struggle to find the actress to play her, and I got to do chemistry reads in the U.K. and in the U.S. with a number of really talented people.”
“But I think when Caitriona walked in, it just had a different energy to it,” he said. “It was very passionate and very charged. I think the moment she came in, everyone knew.”
It was merely a week later that Balfe was on a plane to Scotland with two scripts in hand, full of nerves and excitement. “I just didn’t know what to do with myself — I was sitting on the plane trying to read these scripts, just like, ‘I can’t believe what’s happening. I don’t know what I’m doing,’” Balfe said. “I’d never done TV before. I hadn’t ever even been on a TV set, so I was incredibly nervous.”
Once she landed in Scotland, Balfe hit the ground running into fittings and horseback riding lessons — “because, of course, I’d said I could horse ride and I couldn’t,” she said — likening adapting to becoming a series star to Claire’s unfamiliar territory as she time traveled from 1945 to 1743 for the first time.
“My experience of being thrown in at the deep end sort of mirrored Claire’s experience. It was really good in that way, because it helped me get through it,” Balfe said, “But it was so magical. I also remember the first two weeks of filming, the weather in Scotland was so beautiful, and I would just see rainbows nearly every day.”
Heughan, on the other hand, felt a deep connection to Jamie even prior to the audition as he read the “Outlander” books, recalling, “I just felt like I knew this character. He felt quite familiar to me.”
While Claire’s brilliance and capability from the book shines through as she adapted to her new whereabouts, Balfe wanted to ground her in some realism during Season 1, which alone sees her ripped away from her husband and daughter, leaving her with nothing as she attempts to find her footing in a new time period.
“I remember talking to the writers and I was like, ‘She can’t just go through situations and it not affect her at all — we have to allow some of these things to land,’” Balfe said. “It is that thing of you want strength, but you also want vulnerability and finding the balance of that. That was what I was always interested in.”
It’s for that reason that Balfe admitted she liked that Claire was able to fall apart and heal again by Season 6, in the aftermath of her capture and assault. “I think that’s a really important thing that we get to show people that nobody’s Superwoman or Superman — you will have dark days, and there will be times when you can’t always face the world, but actually, if you allow yourself to get through that, you will come out stronger in the end,” Balfe said. “Claire emerged from all of t