Outlander Facts That'll Make You Want to Travel Back in Time & Rewatch

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Outlander had an interesting connection to the 2014 Sony hack, when leaked emails revealed that former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron met with some Sony execs to talk about delaying the show's release in the U.K. due to its politics.

The series deals with Scottish rebels fighting against British rule during the Jacobite risings in the 1700s, and in 2014, Scotland was voting on whether it should become an independent country from the United Kingdom. Cameron apparently wanted to delay the show's release until after the referendum that September, which makes sense given how very pro-Scotland and anti-England it is. The "no" side won with 55% of the vote, and Scotland continues to be a part of the United Kingdom. 

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The steamy scenes in the show are very specific and intricate because they're meant to convey something about the relationship between Jamie and Claire as opposed to just being gratuitous sex or soft-core porn. So in later seasons, the stars worked with an intimacy coordinator.

"Everyone has intimacy coordinators [now]," Claire’s Caitríona Balfe told ELLE in May 2026, noting one was first brought in season six. "I feel very grateful to have been a part of that time when that came in. Seeing the before and after, I think it is such a benefit."

Before having to film their sex scenes in the pilot, Balfe and Tobias Menzies wrote each other letters as Claire and her husband Frank to help create some intimacy between actors who had only just met. 

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Because some of these scenes can get rather hot and heavy, the stars had to tackle a big question: Do they let their parents watch?

Particularly for the three leads, family dinners could get a bit awkward after their parents watched them enage in explicit sex and torture scenes on a weekly basis.

At PaleyFest in 2014, Balfe revealed that she had heard from various sources that her dad had seen the show. However, she got the news secondhand that he liked the series from her sister since he refused to actually discuss it outright with Balfe. 

Menzies had similar reservations.

"I feel a bit odd," he told E!. "My tummy's doing a funny thing thinking of my mum watching it, so I think I might have to warn her. Yeah, you're right. I'm glad we had this conversation." 

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"This was years ago when I was first approached about adapting Outlander, when it was a feature film," author Gabaldon told E!. "But Liam Neeson and Sean Connery were the first contenders for Jamie." 

Gabaldon admitted that when she was first approached with Sam Heughan as a possibility for Jamie in the Starz series, she found him "grotesque," but now she thinks he's perfect.  "People say, ‘Do [Sam and Caitríona] look just like your imagination?'" Gabaldon mused. "And I'm like, ‘Well, how could they?' But they don't need to. What an actor does is magic."

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Producer Moore has admitted that finding Heughan for Jamie and Balfe for Claire did not go as expected.

"At the outset, I told everyone that we would find Claire first and then Jamie would be the last one cast, and of course it was exactly the opposite," Moore told E!. "It was really hard to find Claire. Sam came in really early in the process and he was literally the first one we cast. We saw the tape and we were like, 'Oh my god, there he is. Let's snatch him up now.'"

But the showrunner could've used some of that time travel to speed up the process of casting Claire. 

"Claire just took a long time," he continued. "A lot of actresses, a lot of tape, looking for really ineffable qualities. She had to be smart, she had to have a strength of character, and really, she had to be someone that you could watch think on camera. But then suddenly Caitríona's tape came in and we had that same light-bulb moment."

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The line that convinced Moore that Balfe was "the one" was the part she read while testing with a pilot scene in which she's on a horse with an injured Jamie. As he's falling off a horse, she says, "Help, stop, he's going over."

"We heard that line so many times we wanted to cut it from the show," Moore recalled to E!, "but when Cat did it, we all just suddenly were engaged in the scene again, and we all just went, 'Oh my god, there she is. That's Claire.'"

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When Gabaldon first saw pictures of Heughan, she did not approve. As she admitted at PaleyFest in 2014, her first thought was "grotesque."

Regardless of how positive she then tried to make that word sound, it's still not a word you would think of when you read how attractive Jamie Fraser is in the books. However, Gabaldon's mind was totally changed when she watched his screen test, and now we're not sure we could point to anyone who doesn't think Heughan is absolutely perfect for the role. 

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You know how Claire looks jaw-droppingly radiant in every single scene, without, it seems, a single stitch of makeup? Well, we asked Outlander's makeup supervisor, Julie Kendrick, how we can copy that look, and apparently, all you have to do is get a time machine, go back and be born of Balfe's mother and father! 

"Caitríona is naturally beautiful and has lovely skin," Kendrick said. "That's always a help when, as a makeup artist, your canvas is a good one! If we were to give away all our trade secrets, then unfortunately, they are no longer secrets! What we can tell you is with the long shooting hours and not that much sleep, you can never drink enough water or have too much blusher." BRB, running to CVS.

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The Scotsman admits he was "desperate" to get cast on Outlander, in part because of executive producer Moore's work on Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. During his screen test lunch break, Heughan talked to Moore about Captain Kirk.

He's also obsessed with another little time travel franchise known as Back to the Future. "I think that is one of the best trilogies ever made," he told E!, with Balfe adding, "Sam tries to talk about it every day, if he can."

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As you may have noticed, Jamie's back scars (from flogging) were shown pretty often. Which means Heughan had to spend a lot of time in the makeup chair.

"Sam has the unfortunate task of having a prosthetic back applied every time his 'taps aff!' as the Scots would say," makeup supervisor Kendrick explained. (‘Taps off' means to take your top off in Glasgow, by the way.) "The whole process for Jamie's back scars and many other scars is two hours, 30 mins and it takes three of us to do. There are two large prosthetic pieces to apply and some smaller ones, and every single section needs to be glued onto Sam's skin, blended and colored up."

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No Velcro, no zippers, not a lot of shoes, and kilts are worn as kilts are supposed to be worn—with absolutely nothing underneath. These are true Scots!

What's not authentic are the effects of war and journeying through the Highlands. To achieve the look of well-worn clothing, the costumes are attacked with cheese graters, burned with blow torches and aged by tying them up with string and baking them.

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Graham McTavish, who played Dougall, wears his kilt "pinned at the shoulder and worn across his chest, very aristocratic," said Dresbach. Meanwhile, Grant O'Rourke, a.k.a. Rupert, "tucks a corner of his plaid into his belt to create a pocket to carry his hat in."

As for Stephen Walters, who portrayed Angus, he "uses a special rock to clasp his plaid," Dresbach noted. "It is used to create what is called a pauper's knot in the Highlands. At one point his rock was lost and he panicked as a Highlander told him to keep it safe and never let it leave Scotland. We found it and keep it very dear."

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"We did add some scenes and some extras," Lotte Verbeek, who played Geillis, explained. "Even though it's quite truthful to the book, there is still some freedom."

And apparently, it's Geillis who changed the most.

"I have not read all the books, but I know that, particularly for my character Geillis, that they do take some freedoms with what happens and how it happens and when it happens," Verbeek added. "So, it's very intriguing for me too. It's hard to talk about my part without giving away spoilers."

Agreed Graham McTavish (Dougan), "Yes, she has the hardest job from the point of view, actually."

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While most of the show is lifted straight out of the books, author Gabaldon has said that, of the things she didn't write, her favorite has to be how Rupert and Angus went from being very minor characters to "the 1800's version of Laurel and Hardy."

We're glad for the slight change, too, since as much as we love Jamie and Claire and watching them go through incredible adventures and horrible tragedies, we also welcome some much-needed comic relief. 

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Get ready to learn a lot about Scottish politics in the 1700s! That may not sound exciting to some, but it is when you consider the fact that Claire is from a future where things don't go so well for the Highlanders she calls her friends (and more-than-friends).

"I think it's a really interesting time that we're setting the show in," Heughan previously told E!, "the second or third Jacobite rebellion, the battle at Culloden, which was sort of the end of the Highland way of life, so they banned the use of Gaelic language and kilts and the playing of pipes, and all of that kind of culture, so it's kind of like a doomed race that we meet in the first series."

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"There's this group, The Outlander Bakers," Balfe once shared with E!, "and I do not know how they do this, but we shoot in the most remote locations up in the middle of  mountains in the highlands. And they will find us and they will bring us not only amazing cakes and cookies but gluten-free stuff. It's quite amazing."

And apparently they take orders!

"Sam has been very smart about it," she continued with a laugh. "He just sort of tweets his love of all things peanut butter and there it arrives!" 

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The show is almost entirely shot on location all over Scotland, with very little green screen. "I think when people watch the show, they'll fall in love with Scotland," Heughan noted to E!. "You'll be amazed."

And Balfe agrees.

"There's such a harsh climate there, and I think that really affects how people are and the realness and rawness of the story," she said. "So I think it was very important to everybody that we have that as an element in our show as well."