“It is like a family reunion!” Outlander star Sophie Skelton says when we ask her what it’s like to reunite with her co-stars for the seventh season of the show.
“We didn’t really get to hang out much this season outside of work. We haven’t seen each other since we wrapped and so the festivals are really fun and one of our first press tours all started together. So it’s just felt like good family time.”
Skelton plays Brianna in the show and we’re speaking to her and her co-star Richard Rankin who plays Brianna’s husband Roger. It’s ironic that the pair are speaking of their co-stars in terms of family, because that really is a major theme for the series. Especially in the later series as Brianna and Roger time-travel from their 20th Century home to join Brianna’s parents, Jamie and Claire Fraser, at Fraser’s Ridge, their 18th century homestead.
Now, it’s probably safe to say that Roger and Brianna have been through a lot. There aren’t too many marriages that have to deal with the trial and tribulations of time travel (okay, one other couple springs to mind *ahem* Jamie and Claire).
However, after finally coming to terms that Fraser’s Ridge is more of a home to them than the 20th century they were born in, the pair are really starting to settle into family life, with Roger even finding a potential vocation as a minister and the couple expecting their second child.
It seems that family unit is only going to become more stable in Season Seven: “Roger and Bree start off in a very unique place,” Skelton tells us. “They’ve built such a good team together now. They’re just a really, great solid couple now and it’s lovely to see that because they’ve been through so much as individuals and together. The MacKenzie clan is growing in strength and in numbers.”
The same probably can’t be said for the Fraser clan. How many times have Jamie and Claire Fraser been up for a-hanging? Answers on a postcard please. The pair have avoided the hangman’s noose plenty of times but for Claire at the end of Outlander Season Six, it seemed like this time may be the last.
After being accused of murdering Malva Christie and her unborn child, Claire (accompanied by Jamie) is marched off by Richard Brown and his men, alongside Malva’s father, Thomas in search of a judge to give Claire a fair trial. However, with the American Revolution bubbling away under the surface, the journey turned out to be a long one and the ending of Season Six finished with Claire and Jamie being separated and Claire on a surefire path to execution.
Not that Brianna and Roger know anything about this. The pair are on a journey of their own, travelling to Edenton for Roger to become ordained, which means doing a month-long training.
It certainly seems that things are finally going well for the young couple but c’mon, this is Outlander! “It’s one of those seasons where they’ve actually finally got their shit together as a couple,” Skelton says, “but the irony is that though they’re more together than they’ve ever been, they [also] get pulled apart at heart…”
Yes it seems there will be more trouble afoot for the Frasers and MacKenzies in Outlander Season Seven, which is released this June and will be split into two parts of eight episodes each, with the back half airing in 2024. “It’s such an adventurous season,” Skelton nods. “There’s so much that goes on. So you’re gonna need some time after the first half just to compose your thoughts. So it’s a good thing you have a little break!”
Having started their journey in the 20th Century and travelling to the 18th, Skelton and Rankin know only too well the positives and negatives of filming throughout time, and we can’t help but wonder – is there a favourite time that they prefer to be in?
“Whichever one I’m not in, I always think I want to be in,” Rankin laughs. “And then you go, ‘oh, I miss the one I was just in…’”
“It’s funny though, because I feel like this season, there is a location change and I actually really enjoyed where we are this season, where we end up,” Skelton says. “Sometimes it’s funny because obviously [the show] spans different oceans and landscapes and times and everything, you can often feel like you’re on a different show to everybody else.
“So there were times this season where I kind of felt like we weren’t on Outlander, which was a little unsettling and weird.”
Wherever Roger and Bree end up, it’s clear that they’ll face whatever comes at them together, which comes back to that central family theme. Indeed, it’s obvious when speaking to Skelton and Rankin that their on-screen family unit means a lot to them. So much so, in fact, that when we ask them what they’re most excited for audiences to see in Season Seven, they both point in one direction: the MacKenzies.
“I love the MacKenzie family,” Skelton enthuses. “We have such a cool little clan going on now and I think that audiences are really really going to like it. Because I feel like we haven’t really had that dynamic on the show before. We’ve had the dynamic of family and mothers and daughters and fathers and daughters and in-laws and all of that, but we haven’t really had a proper unit of like young kids.”
“They’re building and protecting their own thing, by themselves,” adds Rankin.
“They’re proper nesting and it gets blown up a wee bit but it’s alright. It kind of goes dark pretty quickly but it’s just it’s a really cool little world now that the MacKenzies have and the audience is gonna love it.”
Ah, well it isn’t really Outlander if things don’t get blown up a wee bit, is it?!
The seventh season of Outlander is set to premiere on Friday, 16 June exclusively on LIONSGATE+ in the UK with new episodes available to stream weekly on Fridays on the premium international streamer.