Starz is launching season one of the Outlander prequel, Outlander: Blood of my Blood, on August 8, 2025 at 8pm ET/PT. The series, which has already been renewed for season two, follows the love stories of Jamie’s parents, Ellen MacKenzie and Brian Fraser, and Claire’s parents, Julia Moriston and Henry Beauchamp.
The cast is led by Jamie Roy and Harriet Slater as Brian and Ellen, and Jeremy Irvine and Hermione Corfield as Henry and Julia. Starz recently hosted virtual press conferences with three of the four leads along with executive producer and showrunner of the historical fantasy Matthew B. Roberts and executive producer Maril Davis. The following are highlights of the lengthy press conferences.
On establishing the prequel’s identity, separate from Outlander:
Maril Davis: “I just think we’re showing two new love stories in unique ways. And this show is just its own special thing. Once again, we’re entrenched back in Scotland. We’re showing more of the clan system and the interfamily dynamics.
It’s a way to experience two unique love stories. One is a thunderclap moment and love at first sight, and one is a slow-growing one that turns into a great love. So, I think it’s just wholly its own. You do not have to have watched Outlander to watch this series. And if anything, if you haven’t seen Outlander, I would suggest starting with Blood of my Blood and then you can go all the way through to Outlander.”
On the possibility of time ripple changes impacting Outlander:
Matthew B. Roberts: “I don’t lose sleep over it, if that’s a simple answer. But you know we take into consideration – we pay attention to the canon of the show very much to make sure that what we’re doing doesn’t undo something in the show. We certainly want to pay attention to that very carefully, just like we did when we had to make changes on Outlander just because of production reasons, actor availability, budget… things like that. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t unwind something in the books that we were planning on getting to later.
I have an idea of where we’re going in the future, so we make sure that we stay within the guardrails of the Outlander TV series.”
On the prequel’s endpoint:
Matthew B. Roberts: “[When] Jamie Fraser’s born. It’s kind of when the Outlander story starts, in my mind. That becomes Outlander at that point.”
On Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe’s performances influencing how they approached playing their parents:
Harriet Slater: “I didn’t consciously take any of his mannerisms or anything like that, but I think watching Outlander did really help me prepare in that I saw the fieriness, I think, of Jamie, and also of Brianna, because I think there’s both of them in Ellen. I think they get a lot of their strength and determination from Ellen and from that MacKenzie side. Although Brian has a fair amount of that, too.”
Jamie Roy: “The feistiness.”
Harriet Slater: “Yeah, and the strength.”
Jamie Roy: “For me, it wasn’t so much that I watched Sam’s performance to try and get mannerisms, but what’s really funny – and this has become more prevalent recently because just at Comic-Con we released a small clip of the bridge scene. And the manner of comments, people are saying, like, ‘Oh, Jamie’s really nailed the mannerisms of Sam. He must’ve studied really hard and worked really hard for that.’ I’m like, ‘I honestly didn’t.’
It’s almost like casting knew what they were doing when they picked me for this role, because apparently there’s a lot of crossover between Sam and I, just as people. And, you know, when we are together, I do feel like that, like we are very similar personalities.”
Hermione Corfield: “I think when you’re approaching, well, in this particular scenario, obviously, I’m Claire’s mother so Jeremy and I had a conversation as to what traits that she had inherited from both of us. And I think for me, I was keen never to do an impression of Caitriona’s performance but instead to find the core of Claire and then the core of Julia and work out in which ways they’re similar and which ways they’re different, and then build the layers on top of that, in terms of building the character. Of course, you’ve got to take inspiration and pay tribute, but I think it’s important to create your own character.”
On Ellen being far more independent than other women of her era:
Harriet Slater: “I think that’s her struggle is that she is a ‘modern’ woman. She’s educated and that’s very unusual for women at the time, and that’s only because she was her father’s favorite and so he treated her kind of like he treated the boys but better. He also trusted her and listened to her and valued her opinion. She kind of co-led with him in a way; she was instrumental in setting up marriages for her siblings. I think once he has gone, she’s left very vulnerable because she always said she didn’t want to marry for the sake of the clan, which was kind of the duty of women at the time, and he allowed that. But as soon as he’s out of the picture, her brothers use that immediately and sort of start treating her like a pawn in their own game of chess in order to secure strategic alliances for themselves, really, but also for the clan.
And so, yeah, it was frustrating at times to be playing someone who is so intelligent and has so much to offer but isn’t able to—she’s isn’t allowed to because of society and the expectations on women at the time.”
On playing a character who steps into a completely different era unprepared:
Hermione Corfield: “It’s a difficult line to tread. I think one of the big challenges was taking a modern woman who’s on the forefront of the suffragette movement, working in a redaction office, who suddenly finds herself in the 1700s. Because I think for a character to be interesting, there has to be a level of agency for her and an ability to try and change her circumstances to a certain degree. I think that’s what interesting to watch. And I think that was done through the obstacles that she’s faced with.
She can’t necessarily respond to them as she would in World War I England as a woman of that time. But she has to find interesting ways to respond to them within the confines of being a woman that cannot really speak her mind and in a lot of the circumstances is under threat of violence if she doesn’t do as she’s told. So, I think it was leaning into the fact that Julia is an intelligent woman who very quickly realizes the stakes of how dangerous it would be if she was to behave in the way that she had in the ’20s. And so yeah, I think that was the key to it. But it’s a challenge of making sure that’s a consistency in the character, but also, she’s learning and assimilating as well.”
On the prequel’s exquisite costumes helping to inform her character:
Hermione Corfield: “I mean, Trisha [Biggar’s] eye for detail—our costume designer—is so extraordinary. Every single time I go into a fitting, they’ve got some other amazing jacket that’s been handmade and from the most beautiful tweeds and wool. It all feels, you know, exactly as it should if it were in that era. So, it absolutely informs the performance, and particularly going from ’20s, which has sort of looser fits and is a bit more sort of straight-shaped, you then go into the 1700s and everything is fitted and corseted, and it sort of pulls you in and makes you sit up straight. So, it really helped inform character as well.”
On advice and support from the Outlander cast:
Jamie Roy: “The first time I met Sam, his advice was just to really enjoy it and just to appreciate all the moments. You’re gonna have days which are long. You’re gonna have days which are tough. But at the end of the day, like, look at what we’re doing, you know? I’ve honestly taken that advice really to heart, to the point when we were walking out to Hall H and I took the moment just to remind myself this is the last first time that we’ll have this experience. So, just standing there and then taking a mental image of this. And when we’re on set, imagining if it’s the last time.
One of the things I said to you, remember, in one of our last takes, one of our last scenes, I said to Harriet right before we were about to call action, I was like, ‘Hey, […]what happens if this was the last time we ever got to do this?’”
Harriet Slater: “And I’d just like to say that was on my coverage! And I obviously got emotional! It wasn’t meant to be emotional!”
Jamie Roy: “She’s like, ‘What?!’”
Harriet Slater: “So then I suddenly start to think, ‘Oh, no! What if we never get to do this again?’ And I was really sad. So, I think we were all really hoping that we’d get another season, so thank goodness.”
Jamie Roy: “But it worked, though, like, by purpose of saying that because I remember that take and it was really, really nice and it felt really present. I felt your presence.”
Harriet Slater: “[…] It was nice. That was the moment where I really, really just-because it was right at the end of the shoot and it made me reflect on the whole last seven months, I think, that we were there, and just really prayed that we got another season. And we did.”
On the Outlander: Blood of my Blood casting process:
Hermione Corfield: “I was familiar with Outlander before, and I was familiar with the project. And when I got the call saying that they wanted to screentest me, I then realized that Jeremy was playing Henry, which was a really lovely surprise because Jeremy have known each other for 10 years. So, I was quite lucky in that respect because whenever you walk into those chemistry reads, it can be a bit of a challenge. But because he and I had known each other so long, it was an immediate level of comfortability, which was a huge advantage.
We did the chemistry read and then it was pretty quick, actually. I got told that I was going to Scotland. So, yes, I jumped on a plane and read the scripts on the plane.”
Jamie Roy: “I had auditioned for Outlander season seven beforehand for a one-line role, Militia Man No. 2, I think it was, or maybe it was No. 1 … I can’t remember. So that was my first day and I got pinned for it and I was very excited. I thought, ‘Yes, this is my big break on TV. This is gonna make me a star, this one line, guy who has no name.’
And then my agent told me that the role fell through, but they said they would find something else for me another time. And I remember feeling really, really quite upset and gutted about it because it was like, ‘Oh, no.’ And then I got another audition, this time it was for a bigger role. This guy had a name. It was for a guest star in season seven, so I was like, ‘Oh, this is cool, right? I’ve done something well, I can say more than five, six words.’
That audition went really well, didn’t hear anything back, and I was like ‘Okay, cool, that’s fine, just grateful for the opportunity.’ And then it was I think January ’23 where I got the email with the casting for Brian. I remember I was lying on my bed in Florida where I was staying at the time and just with my family, seeing them for the Christmas holidays, whatever. When I just read this little blurb about the project and the breakdown for the character, there was something so vivid in me that I knew … I was like, ‘This is the one.’
For whatever reason it is, I read a couple of paragraphs on Brian, I was like, ‘No, this is me. I know this has to be the one.’ And as actors, I feel like […] you’ll get breakdowns and additions, ‘Oh, yeah, I can probably play that. Oh, maybe that’s a stretch. Yeah, I could – that’s close to home.’ But I remember so vividly reading that and being like, Yeah.’ Which is so wild, because it is for a leading role in a brand-new series. So, I was like, my head must’ve been the size of the room. I don’t know, bigger than it is already.”
Maril Davis: “Little do you know, though, that we pulled it because I think of Blood of My Blood. We pulled that, the Militia Man No. 1.”
Jamie Roy: “I only found that out after the time. But it’s such a lovely story, because I’ve told so many of my friends. I was like, ‘You know, you send audition after audition through, and you never hear anything back and you just never know what’s happening behind closed doors and what the future holds for you.’
So, if there’s any actors who hear that, it’s just like not to give up and always remain hopeful.”
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