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Starz’s beloved historical fantasy series Outlander will take its final bow this May, wrapping up over a decade of storytelling adapted from the pages of Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling books. But choosing how to do so has never been an easy task, showrunner Matthew B. Roberts tells Den of Geek ahead of the final season’s debut. “We always thought it was going to get easier. We were wrong. It always got harder.”
Roberts explains that when Gabaldon writes, she can access “any character, anytime, anywhere,” whereas the series has to tackle logistical problems that shape how the Outlander team tells its version of her stories.
“We found that when you deal with real human beings who have real lives, scheduling is probably the biggest challenge,” Roberts says. “If you hope you have someone for an arc that you want to do in the show, and you don’t have that character, then you have to figure out, ‘okay, how do we still get this story in the show, but without that particular character?’ Because we don’t have that particular actor.”
The show started out relatively small, telling the tale of former WWII nurse Claire Randall (Caitríona Balfe) traveling back in time to 1743 and falling in love with Highland warrior Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), but as Gabaldon’s books expanded beyond Scotland to Paris and then North Carolina, so did Outlander, along with the hundreds of extras needed to make its settings believable and historically accurate.
“Bringing hundreds of people out to certain locations is always challenging,” Roberts explains. “And we do have time and budget constraints. All those things are huge challenges. As Diana’s books upped the ante, the show had to do that as well.”
Despite the show’s challenges, both creatively and logistically, Roberts describes making it as an amazing experience.
“We were wrapping up the second season of [prequel series] Blood of my Blood recently, and my assistant put together all the crew photos from all the seasons of Outlander on one big poster. For the first season, there was just this small crew, and it just kept growing and growing. In the last one, there are hundreds of people, and I think that was the thing that really struck me, how huge Outlander became, not only in our lives, but in Scotland and for our crew and cast. It was pretty astonishing to see that poster.”
Outlander season 8 begins streaming on Starz on March 6.
The post Outlander Boss Reveals the Biggest Creative Challenge Behind the Scenes appeared first on Den of Geek.
