In his just-published memoir, Waypoints: My Scottish Journey, Outlander star Sam Heughan opens up about a brutal scene he shot in Season 1 of the Starz show and how it affected him negatively—a topic he hasn’t broached in depth before.
The moment in question is when his character, Jamie Fraser, is tortured and brutally raped by his nemesis Black Jack Randall, played by Tobias Menzies of Game of Thrones fame.
The shoot included a full-frontal shot of his character after the rape. Heughan details in his memoir he had agreed to nudity in his contract, but he didn’t feel this level of nudity was appropriate to the scene. “This wasn’t a moment where I felt that being naked would add to the horror of what Jamie undergoes in that castle dungeon as a form of punishment, subjugation and humiliation,” he writes in the book. “I pushed back, reasoning that nudity sexualised [sic.] a horrific experience for my character, and it sparked quite a debate.” Outlander is based on the series of bestselling novels by Diana Gabaldon, and the rape originates in the source material.
Deadline has reached out to Starz and will add any comment received. “We’re not playing around here,” showrunner Ron D. Moore told Vulture of the scene in 2015. “This is the story.
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