Transcription[]
The following is a transcription of the Official Outlander Podcast episode 207, "Faith." It is provided here for the purposes of study, criticism, and accessibility.
RONALD D. MOORE: Hello and welcome to the podcast for Episode 207, "Faith." I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the Outlander television series and I'm joined today by the lovely and talented Toni Graphia. Hello, Toni.
TONI GRAPHIA: Hi.
MOORE: Well, this is one of the standout episodes of this season. We kind of knew this from the outset, in the scheme of things, when we were breaking the book down into component hours and what was gonna happen when, and this one always stood out as like, that's gonna be a great episode. And I think you had your sights on this one early, didn't you?
GRAPHIA: Oh, yeah. I loved this part of this book, much like last year when I wanted the witch trial episode, it was my favorite part, I knew when I read this that I had to write this episode. So I'm hoping we can make it through today without tears. To help us we have our Scotch of the day...
MOORE: Oh, yeah.
GRAPHIA: Which is a special... It's Caol Ila, Cask Strength, just to get us through it, which was introduced to me by David Frew, our post-production supervisor in Scotland. Cheers.
MOORE: Cheers. Cask Strength, huh?
GRAPHIA: Yeah, we're gonna need it.
MOORE: Oh, man.
GRAPHIA: It's...
MOORE: Wow! Yeah, that is right out of the cask, boys and girls.
GRAPHIA: Oh, yeah, you can taste the years on this one.
MOORE: All right, well, this will be a good podcast.
GRAPHIA: Ooh. Oh.
MOORE: This little opening beat here in the Boston Library was, and correct me if I'm wrong, Toni, 'cause I often think back and remember these things incorrectly, but as I recall, this was something that came to me at home, as an idea that I just wanted somewhere in the season.
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: Like I had an idea about platforming where we're going with Claire. You know, we're starting with her in the 1940s and then we go further with her later on at some point. And I thought, well, there's a midpoint scene somewhere in the series where we see, we can just touch base with Claire and Brianna in Boston in the 1950s. And then I think I just came in the room and we just talked about where it would go.
GRAPHIA: Right. Yeah, this scene was your idea. In the book, the chapter after Claire loses the baby is like, she wakes up, I think like, five days after it's already happened and she already knows about it. But we didn't wanna miss that, you know, so I had originally proposed starting with the hospital scene, which you'll see in a minute right here. And I wanted... I pitched it as an 18th-century version of ER to see what they would do to try to save her and her baby. But you had the idea that we see, you know, Claire with young Brianna first in that opening scene which I think is gonna really freak people out because they're not gonna be sure if it's real or if it's her, she's imagining it or what. But we, we wanted to show a little of what Claire's losing. 'Cause when you see her with that little girl, it makes the rest of the episode very, very poignant.
MOORE: We spent a lot of time in post trying to figure out how we were gonna do the bird and how literal the bird would be in the room. You know, did Claire literally see the bird flying inside the hospital? Was it an animated kind of thing that came out of the book? We went through many iterations before we kind of settled on a much simpler, cleaner, just it's a bird flying in the sky, that kind of fades into the scenery and then down to Claire.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, we used the... I used the blue heron, which is not in the book, and it was actually trying to come up with something for the Master Raymond scene, which in the book, it's beautiful, in the book about how blue is the color and his hands glow blue and the room is blue. We knew we couldn't really show that on camera without a lot of special effects. So I'd come up with the heron as a way to show that this is what she imagines as she's escaping the horror of what's happening to her there, when she's losing her baby, that she just fixates on a memory of this heron flying because blue is sort of carrying her away and carrying her pain away.
MOORE: Now this beat with the Virgin Mary and the statue, that was in your first draft, wasn't it?
GRAPHIA: Yeah, I like in the book, they mention when Master Raymond says, "Your cloak is blue like my own, like the Virgin Mary, like my own." I grabbed onto that and wanted to use the Virgin Mary as somewhat of a motif here, as well. And I knew I wanted the Virgin Mary to be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes, looming over her, and Gina Cromwell made a great Virgin for me. I told her exactly what we wanted it to look like and I...
MOORE: I forgot we made that.
GRAPHIA: We made it so that we could break it. We had to make several of them. And I usually like to write a lot of dialogue, but not here because I wanted Claire to wake up and just see her face as she felt her belly and realized that the baby was not inside her anymore.
MOORE: I love this whole performance that... I mean Cait's amazing through this whole show, but this scene in particular, the look in her eyes as she's hunting for her baby and doesn't wanna believe the truth, it's just... She's just gone. She's just not there anymore.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, I struggled with how, in the book they don't have the moment where she learns this, and I thought we can't skip over that. I wanna see Mother Hildegarde tell her this, and I struggled with how would she say it to her? And I think many years of Catholic school led me to the, "She has joined the angels," as being the kindest way that the nun could tell her that her baby had passed away. And Claire just cannot, cannot... It doesn't compute in her brain and...
MOORE: Yeah, she just can't get there.
GRAPHIA: No, and she starts screaming and even screaming in French 'cause the nuns are... They don't even understand English, most of the nuns there. I was not here for the shooting of this episode. Matt, Matthew Roberts, supervised the shooting. In fact, he directed the opening scene with Claire and little Brianna.
MOORE: That's right.
GRAPHIA: And he did a great job. I trust him with my scripts. He's wonderful and I was like, "I'm glad you're there, Matt, in a way, and I'm not because I don't think I could even... I couldn't have even..." It would have been hard to have been... Be there and watch this in person because it's just so heartbreaking. And Cait's so good.
MOORE: And when Cait goes to those places, she really goes to those places.
GRAPHIA: Oh, yeah. This was your idea as well. You asked for a scene where she's given last rites, just to make it... It wasn't in the first draft but we added it because we wanted to, we wanted to show just how much danger she was in, and that her life was really in danger. And even though the fans know we're not gonna kill Claire, she's our heroine, I think that some people that don't know the books are gonna be really shocked that the baby died, because I think in any other network show they would have saved that baby.
MOORE: And I think there was an assumption for people that didn't know the books, the beginning of the season she shows up pregnant, you know, in the 1940s, and I think they're assuming that there's a connection... It's the same baby and probably in the last week or so they're starting to go, but she looks so much more pregnant than she was in the '40s.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, they think we made a mistake.
MOORE: Yeah, they're like, "Is this just bad, is this continuity error?" Did they really?
GRAPHIA: Yeah, several reviewers were like, "Well, they really screwed this up. Obviously she's not as pregnant when she comes back." And I'm like, you just wait.
MOORE: Oh, just wait.
GRAPHIA: I was actually glad that they wrote that, 'cause it kind of covered this surprise that we had coming here.
MOORE: That's great.
GRAPHIA: You know, I had a lot of voiceover in this scene, which we cut it all out in editing and in fact most of the show there was a lot of voiceover we cut, just because you don't need it. When you see Cait's face, it just plays on her face.
MOORE: I think overall we just, we've been pulling back bit by bit from the voiceover, just because the story does carry itself at this point. I don't wanna lose it completely, 'cause it maintains a tie to sort of the literary roots of the show.
GRAPHIA: Right. Exactly. We only had a lot of it here because most of the scenes, there's a lot of scenes where she's alone and doesn't... She's not talking to someone and thinking something else. She's literally alone and we don't know what she's thinking. But you look at this woman's face and you know what she's thinking.
MOORE: Yeah, it's pretty clear.
GRAPHIA: I love Bouton. This was one of my favorite things from the book, where Mother Hildegarde orders Bouton to lie with Claire and watch over her. I love that.
MOORE: This was a tricky scene to translate from the book. It's a really great piece of writing in the book. You read this section of Master Raymond coming in and healing her. It's pretty compelling, but it's very internal. It's all completely told from Claire's point of... From her delirious mind's point of view, and, you know, it's a lot of metaphor and crystals, and the crystal spheres that are being cracked in his healing hands.
GRAPHIA: It's magic. It's a mixture of medicine and magic.
MOORE: And it was hard to literalize that, you know, in the scene. But I think eventually we sort of got to the place where I think it all does come through.
GRAPHIA: And there's the heron again, and he's urging her, you know, blue is the color of healing, you know, "Imagine this and let your pain, let it take your pain away."
MOORE: Yeah, like all of this there was no way to convey any of this without the voiceover. You had to have Claire's voice talking you through some of this.
GRAPHIA: Yeah. We wanted you to see both magic and the real medicine, which is that she has an infection that would have killed her and he literally saves her life because he's a healer himself, and has this knowledge of how to heal her that the nuns don't, that no one in the hospital does. And they have a special, a very special connection here.
MOORE: And even Claire doesn't really understand his abilities or what he's doing.
GRAPHIA: No. No and he's taken a great risk to come here, because she's just warned him in the last episode that he should leave town and he should be gone by now. But, you know, he told her, "You shouldn't have come to the apothecary to warn me." You know, and she said, "This is what we do for our friends," and then here it's a nice callback because, to what Matt wrote in that episode is that, you know, she tells him, "You shouldn't have come here," and he says, "This is what we do for our friends." I love the sets, too, in this.
MOORE: Yeah, it's great a location.
GRAPHIA: This hospital is... The bed that she's in and just the old hospital, which we shot in a church, the Glasgow Cathedral. And I like when he says, "We'll all see each other again."
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: He told her a few episodes ago in my other episode, "You will see Frank again," and here he tells her, "We will all see each other again." I don't really know what that means, but it sounded mystical and...
MOORE: Yeah, it sounds mystical.
GRAPHIA: And he says to her, "Have faith," and I purposely had him say "Have faith," because, of course, that's what Mother Hildegarde has named the baby. The baby had to have a name and be baptized to even be buried on the church property. And Mother Hildegarde lied...
MOORE: Which was interesting. I never even knew that.
GRAPHIA: Yeah. That's something I found in the research and I thought it was so cool that I put it in, because Mother Hildegarde basically broke a vow. I mean she lied to God to get that done. I mean she, well, not to God. She says, "Keep this between you, me and God," because she lied to get her buried there. At this point, we don't know where Jamie is.
MOORE: Right. 'Cause all we've seen is Jamie was taken away by the police at the end of the last episode.
GRAPHIA: Right.
MOORE: I mean this is a significant period of time in the book as I recall. Weeks go by, right?
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: There's weeks of her in the hospital and her, you know, still unable to get past the death of the child, and holding Jamie responsible and really being in a dark, bad place for a long time.
GRAPHIA: She's angry for a long time. And she actually, in the book, also when she leaves the hospital, she goes to Fontainebleau with Louise... and she stays there for even more weeks.
MOORE: That's right.
GRAPHIA: And here we had to condense those chapters to make this work in one episode of television, and that's one of the challenges of the book when you have all this great material but you have to get it into, you know, less than 60 minutes, so one of the things we did was, you know, basically go straight from this, where she's saying she can't forgive Jamie. "There's not a sea deep enough." And we had to take her home right after this, to keep the story going. But we found... I love the part about Louise trying to help her at Fontainebleau, so we found a way to, a unique way to use Louise later. You'll see later in the episode, we did figure Louise, but for now...
MOORE: Yeah, I think that was a key component, 'cause that's her one friend in this world, really.
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: Once Jamie's gone, who does... Who is there for... Master Raymond has done his thing and he's out of there. But Louise is like the one friend, and it seemed right to keep Louise into this story.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, absolutely, and she helped Louise to keep her own baby. Louise is pregnant and Claire helped her during her... At the time she was really struggling with that dilemma, about her baby and Prince Charles.
MOORE: And I'm trying to remember how this was structured on the page because, you know, we use Louise later in a flashback, obviously. But did we... Was it written as a flashback, or was it written linear?
GRAPHIA: Oh, yeah. No, no it wasn't written linear.
MOORE: Okay, it was always structured in a flashback.
GRAPHIA: It was always a flashback.
MOORE: Okay.
GRAPHIA: You know, this episode, in the first draft, I did have much more of, you know, Claire and the King and what happened with her and Jamie, and what happened in the Star Chamber. And it just was a little, it was flashy but it just wasn't as deep emotionally and I remember, you know, you read the first draft and you liked it. You were like, "Yeah, it's good, but it's missing something," and I remember you really just gave me one note which is you just said to me, "It's all about the baby."
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: And that was really all I needed to hear. I knew that I needed to just dig deeper into that story and I did a page-one rewrite on it, actually, which I did in Scotland. That's the only episode I wrote in Scotland and I think it lent a certain magic to it, 'cause it was really the mood of the place and staying up every night after episode... I was there supervising Episode 204, the dinner party, and I'd come home exhausted and have to stay up all night, you know, but I'd just be... Have my laptop looking out the window at the rainstorms and I just got in that mood, that, that really, you know, place where I could access the emotions for this. And it came out a much better script just from that one note.
MOORE: This is almost my favorite scene in the episode. I mean there's so many great scenes in this episode, but I love this scene...
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: Of her returning home.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, this... We actually, in the script, a scene that got cut that we never got to film, was Fergus comes to get her from the hospital and he brings this bouquet of blue flowers. Again, I was using, keeping blue as a motif, but here you can see that he's carrying the blue flowers and he went to get her and just the servants, you know, this is our anti-Downton Abbey shot, 'cause even though I love Downton Abbey, I've always wanted to do something where the servants line up, but here it's for a very different reason than Downton Abbey. There's no happy greetings, it's just heartbreak and Suzette just slays me and...
MOORE: Oh, and Magnus...
GRAPHIA: And Magnus... Oh! And Claire's face.
MOORE: And then she like, you know, bows to Magnus and it's just... It's heartbreaking. It's just such a great scene.
GRAPHIA: Yeah. Ah! I just... I totally believe she's a woman that's lost...
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: ...lost her baby. Like... She basically won't let him bow to her because he saved her life, you know, when he...
MOORE: He saved her life.
GRAPHIA: She said at the duel, "Take me to Mother Hildegarde," and he did, and he was so worried about her and I think it's a classy moment here that she bows to him.
MOORE: It's so beautiful.
GRAPHIA: Okay I'm...
MOORE: I am, too...
GRAPHIA: This is making me cry.
MOORE: It's an emotional moment, it really is.
GRAPHIA: This is really, yeah.
MOORE: It's the power of this show, when it gets to these places and it really can touch you deeply and I'm so proud of it in these moments. It's just like the whole production, you know, the cast, the crew, the script, it's just, you know, it makes something like this work.
GRAPHIA: We had to practice those servants, when they bowed, because they bowed so fast and we kept making 'em go slower.
MOORE: Slower.
GRAPHIA: Slower, it's sad. You're really sad and they finally, they got it and it really works.
MOORE: This scene, in a way, was a callback to a scene that, unfortunately, I cut from the previous episode where we had set up Fergus brushing her hair after the attack and the dinner party and all that. And this was sort of a reprise of that just sort of establishing that it's something that he still was sort of doing as a bit of a routine. And a way of kind of connecting with her.
GRAPHIA: Right. He learned how to do it because he was raised in a brothel, so he knows how to take care of women, and he's a very sensitive kid even though he's a little rascal. And here's where he sees the perfume bottle. But we don't know why, yet, that it's so upsetting to him.
MOORE: Back to Prague.
GRAPHIA: We cut a few other scenes in between that...
MOORE: I was just trying to remember. There was other pieces here.
GRAPHIA: It was a scene where it was just the two of them at the dinner table.
MOORE: At dinner, that's what it was.
GRAPHIA: And Jamie's empty chair between them... But we didn't really need it. The hair-brushing scene said it all.
MOORE: I mean the first cut of this episode came in at an hour and a half. And I remember thinking, "Oh, my God, it's an hour and a half over, how did that happen?" And it was clearly like an amazing episode.
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: And I was really afraid of, wow, what are we gonna do? So I immediately called the network and said, "Hey, look, here's the deal. I haven't even touched this show yet but it's an hour and a half." They were like, "What?" I said, "Yeah. So, look, can we get permission to do a 90-minute episode?"
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: "Cause I really don't know realistically how much I can possibly cut from this show." And they thought about it and they said, "Sure, if you really think it's that great, absolutely, we'd be willing to do it," which is amazing.
GRAPHIA: That was amazing of them... Of their faith in us.
MOORE: Their faith in the show. But then truth-wise, when you really got into then sculpting the show itself, a lot of things just kind of came out because you sort of felt like you were hitting the same beat over and over.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, these parts were more powerful.
MOORE: A lot of emotional beats play stronger if they're a little shorter and you're not quite milking it. There's that point when you're asking the audience to cry too long.
GRAPHIA: Right, right.
MOORE: You know, and this one got even stronger as it came down, and at the end it's not nearly... It's still over an hour, but it's not nearly at the length we once thought it would be.
GRAPHIA: Right. So... We saw the Apostle spoons in the earlier scene, which will figure later in the episode, the christening gift from Jamie.
MOORE: Where did you come across that?
GRAPHIA: Our historian, actually. You said, "I want Jamie to give her a christening gift," when I was supervising Episode 5, Untimely Resurrection, and so I asked the historian, Danny Barrow, find what would be a traditional Gaelic christening gift. And she came up with like a bonnet or a, you know, 18th-century rattle, you know, a few items, but I wanted, selfishly, I knew that this... I was in the middle of writing this and I wanted to use something that they could, you know, leave on the grave later and when I saw those spoons, the Apostle spoons, I was like, "Oh, my God, this is perfect." 'Cause I always thought, "You can't leave a christening gift on a grave, because what about your other kids if you have some later?" And the spoons kind of solved that 'cause there were 12 of 'em and it allowed us to put a little joke in about Jamie saying, "We're gonna have 12 kids." And then they can leave a spoon. So I chose 'em way back in Episode 5 in order to make it work in this episode.
MOORE: No, it was great. You always seem to find these really interesting props, you know, from the watch.
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: You always find the object that's really fascinating.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, yeah. Just something unique to the period.
MOORE: This was all tricky stuff to shoot, you know, the attack of Jack Randall on Fergus, how much you could show, how much you wanna show. You know, this is clearly dicey material. We're shooting with an actual child. And there was a lot of sensitivity and a lot of discussion beforehand about well how far we would go, how far we wouldn't go. Lots of conversations, obviously, with his mother, who was very comfortable with it and everyone just sort of, you know, said, "Okay, let's be clear on what we're doing, what the intent is."
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: "We just wanna... We just wanna convey to the audience what happened. And we don't need to really show more than that." It just has to be... It's horrifying enough and you don't need too much to really get there.
GRAPHIA: I feel bad 'cause in the last episode when we cut away, after you see the red jacket hanging, a lot of reviewers were like, "Oh, that was cruel of them to not show the whole thing. They just cut away and left it to our imaginations and, you know." I was like... "Uh-oh." When they see this, they may not be too happy.
MOORE: You're gonna, you know...
GRAPHIA: It's not...
MOORE: You're scared right here like, "Oh, my God, what are they gonna show me?"
GRAPHIA: Yeah. But it's not gratuitous. It's very important that we see why Jamie broke his promise. I mean this was a huge promise that was gonna destroy their marriage, it cost them their baby. And if we didn't see what made him so mad.
MOORE: And it turns Claire's heart.
GRAPHIA: Yeah...
MOORE: It turns Claire's heart and it makes her...
GRAPHIA: He could not, he could not just... Fergus could not just tell her this story. The audience needed to see it. And it's sort of like Jamie's POV of, "Oh, now, we get it." Now we know why he had to break that promise and why he had to kill, try to kill Jack Randall, because he couldn't let him go unpunished for this.
MOORE: Right.
GRAPHIA: Jamie loves that kid. I think this does happen in the book but I don't think it's about the perfume bottle. I think he broke in and tried to steal money out of the bag or something.
MOORE: Is that what it was?
GRAPHIA: But I think it was...
MOORE: He definitely broke into a room.
GRAPHIA: He broke into Randall's room. It was like... We called it "the rabbit walking into the lion's den" is how we always described this scene.
MOORE: And I think he might have seen him as soon as he walked in, right? Wasn't Randall just sitting there when he walked in or something?
GRAPHIA: Something, I can't remember now but I believe we added, we made it the perfume bottle, so that when he's telling the story to Claire, he says, "This lavender, my lady," and she instantly knows, "Oh, my God, that's the same lavender he used on Jamie." And Jamie had nightmares after this and now Claire's seeing, you know, this kid she loves have the same nightmares and essentially go through what Jamie went through. And now she goes to Mother Hildegarde to ask to see the King, and I love Mother Hildegarde, she's just no BS. She's like, "Okay, you're gonna have to sleep with him."
MOORE: "You know that's the deal, right?"
GRAPHIA: "You know that's part of the deal."
MOORE: "We all know that, right? I mean I've done it myself."
GRAPHIA: Well, she... Yeah.
MOORE: "Everyone in this hospital has had to sleep with the king. I mean that's just... Obviously, right?""
GRAPHIA: I think maybe we should stop drinking now. This is actually one of my favorite lines in the script, where Claire just basically says, "Yeah, well, if I have to lose my virtue over this or my honor, just add it to the list of things I've already lost in Paris," and I added that line because I felt it really summed up what we've always talked about in the writers' room, is this season being that Paris is very toxic to this couple. And that, that they go there with this grand plan and these great dreams of stopping a war, and yet little by little the city just chips away at them and takes so much from them that this... That line for me summed it up and she was like, "What else do we have to lose? I have to go get my husband out."
MOORE: This is pretty much a complete creation in CG of the exterior of Versailles with some live-action elements combined with mattes and complete computer matte animation.
GRAPHIA: Mmm-hmm.
MOORE: This is back in Prague at the big library where Jamie was playing chess.
GRAPHIA: And the gentleman of the bed chamber, the man who's leading Claire in is actually Guillaume Lecomte, who was our French translator and on the set with us for every episode.
MOORE: Oh, yeah, that's right.
GRAPHIA: We gave him this small part, and he has this one line to introduce Claire to the King, and he did a great job.
MOORE: And this is the library next door to the library. There's like two big giant rooms of libraries.
GRAPHIA: Can never have too many libraries.
MOORE: And you can never have too many libraries. And then those transition back to our set.
GRAPHIA: I love what she's wearing, too, and I love that she's, of course, got the crystal on, that she was given by Master Raymond. And the King, I love what he's wearing. Oh, my gosh.
MOORE: Yeah, he's so great.
GRAPHIA: He looks fantastic. He's always had a little crush on Claire, I think.
MOORE: Yeah, I always liked that...
GRAPHIA: Since he first met her.
MOORE: He's had his eye on her from day one.
GRAPHIA: He kissed her hand in this garden, and he saw her at Versailles and I think he's like, "Ooh. Ooh, la-la. Look who's in my chamber." I researched this as well, I wanted him to offer her something that was a delicacy, and I read that he had, I can't even pronounce the French. "L'orangerie"? It's an orange grove, in any case. And oranges were a delicacy for him and chocolate was a big thing, they drank hot chocolate which was from Spain. And so it's really a seduction. I mean this is... He's seducing her with these rarities that you can't get.
MOORE: I thought the oranges were just an homage to Godfather.
GRAPHIA: Everything comes back to Godfather.
MOORE: Everything's an homage to Godfather.
GRAPHIA: So, that's cool with me. I'm Italian.
MOORE: Godfather may be the most discussed movie in any writers' room. Like I don't...
GRAPHIA: Totally.
MOORE: Every writers' room I've been in it has to have... Endless discussions of Godfather, in every story.
GRAPHIA: Absolutely. I like also, coming up, that he notices her rings 'cause I just thought...
MOORE: Oh, yeah.
GRAPHIA: You know, he would see that this woman's got two wedding rings on, and that intrigues him. It probably makes him think that she's more open-minded to being with him.
MOORE: Yeah, like, yeah, well if you're like...
GRAPHIA: Yeah, he's, he's like, "I admire your loyalty to your ex, because you obviously still love him. You're a woman that can handle many men."
MOORE: A woman of many diverse tastes.
GRAPHIA: Yes.
MOORE: And appetites.
GRAPHIA: "Got my English husband, got my Scottish husband..."
MOORE: "So and then there's a French..."
GRAPHIA: "How'd you like a French..."
MOORE: "French King, you know?"
GRAPHIA: Till you've had a Frenchman, you haven't had...
MOORE: "Just you wait."
GRAPHIA: Yeah. We enjoyed working on this in the writers' room, because it's just such a shocking... I remember, actually, this was a spoiler for me, because I hadn't read ahead in the books the first season and somebody said to me, "Oh, yeah, well, when Claire F's the king, in book two," and I went, "What?! She does what?" And I could not imagine, and I was so mad at the person, "I can't believe that you did that spoiler but don't tell me why."" When I was reading Dragonfly I couldn't wait to find out why, 'cause I thought his must be a huge reason, that this just couldn't happen in our universe. When I got there, I realized, "Oh, okay, this is the reason." And that's how we, you know, can get away with something like that. Your heroine actually being with someone else, a king. But she does it for the love of her husband, so it's awesome.
MOORE: I love the whole misdirect here, that she... Yeah, that they're going to that bed that we keep cutting to over and over again.
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: And then he gets up, he walks towards the bed. It's just all happening and then it just takes this... I remember when I read this in the book for the first time, it just... It's one of those moments that Diana just delivers a hard left turn in the story and you're just left like, what?
GRAPHIA: "What?"
MOORE: "Wait a minute. Did I miss a chapter? How are we in this room?"
GRAPHIA: Right. And Gary Steele did such an amazing job. This is one of our favorite sets of the season, the bedroom and the Star Chamber, which I think it was Gary's idea to put a secret door so that you could go straight into the Star Chamber. Well, what we call the Star Chamber...
MOORE: I know, we call it the Star Chamber. It's not called that in the book.
GRAPHIA: It's the cabinet de vérité or something.
MOORE: Yeah, it just became our name for it.
GRAPHIA: Yeah. Come.
GRAPHIA: And, of course, harkening back to Le Dame Blanche, apparently everyone in France has heard the rumors of Claire being the witch.
MOORE: Very gossipy bunch in France.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, they are. They drink a lot and they gossip.
MOORE: They didn't need the Internet in those days.
GRAPHIA: No.
MOORE: They really didn't. Their social media was much faster.
GRAPHIA: Much, much better.
MOORE: Le Dame Blanche, @LaDameBlanche.
GRAPHIA: I like when he just touches her, he's like, "So pale, so fine." Like, he just loves her. He's just tickled by her and he...
MOORE: He's so great in this role.
GRAPHIA: He's great and...
MOORE: He's such a perfect piece of casting.
GRAPHIA: Yeah. We talked a lot... I know we talked a lot in the room and you kept saying like, "What makes him do all this?" What is, you know, and we had to dig into why he would do this and it just came... We did some research on the king, and he's just so capricious and he's just mercurial and he loves a show. And he's the king. He's kind of bored with all the rituals, and so he invents these games and these things, that's why he has the Star Chamber. In fact, I believe, and this probably is the real king, dabbled in the black arts himself. But once in a while he had to clean up the town to sort of show the Pope and the church that he was on board with all the rules, but secretly he dabbled himself in astrology and things and that's why we, you know, the theme of this room is kind of the stars and the astrology, and that the King himself is fascinated with this stuff.
MOORE: I remember Gary Steele brought me down to art department once. He said he wanted to show me a model for a set and it was the model for this set. And it was like a three-dimensional model that was built on a tabletop with a big dome on it. And he was so excited by this set. I remember he was really intrigued by it and I saw it and I was like, I didn't quite get it at first, but I sort of went with just his enthusiasm and his passion for it and said, "Yeah, let's go for it." I think he and I had had a preliminary conversation about the set before that, as I recall now.
GRAPHIA: I think Matt, actually, was one of the people who said to leave the ceiling... At one point we wanted to leave the ceiling open so that you could actually see the stars. But then I think we realized this scene took place during the day.
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: So we had to put a ceiling on it but we wanted the effect of the stars coming in. Yeah.
MOORE: Of the stars in the dome. 'Cause I think Gary, yeah I think one of the things Gary asked me at first, "What's the history of this room? Is this a room that's always been in the palace? Has it been... Did it used to be something else? Has it been turned over to this? How do you want it to feel?" 'Cause everything in the show's been very grounded in terms of what's Paris like. What is Versailles really like? Trying to be as close as possible to the real places. And this was a place I thought that we should go in a different direction. Like just, let's say this room was purpose-built for this. Whoever built this, Louis' grandfather, whoever, sometime in the past, built this room specifically...
GRAPHIA: The Sun King who built Versailles, was Louis' grandfather and Mother Hildegarde's godfather. Yeah.
MOORE: It's a great set. It's moody.
GRAPHIA: It's beautiful.
MOORE: It was also interesting, when you stood on the physical set and you stood in the center of the circle, the dome on top produced this strange echo effect. So we kept taking people onto the set and telling 'em to stand in the center and they would look at you and go, "Okay," and I would say, "All right, now just say something." And they'd say, "What," and then they would jump. Because you only heard this weird echo all around you if you stood precisely in the center of the circle.
GRAPHIA: Oh, yeah, that's cool.
MOORE: And so it was always... Then everybody got into it, kept bringing friends, "Okay now, stand here." And they would say, "What?" "Now, just talk," and then they would say something and they would all jump, like, what a weird...
GRAPHIA: Ah. Must have been heartbreaking to take this set down.
MOORE: Yeah, it was hard.
GRAPHIA: 'Cause it was for one scene.
MOORE: It was for one scene.
GRAPHIA: I mean, we built it for one scene but was so important to the show. It's really an epic moment in the show. It's something all the fans are waiting to see. Although we did struggle with this scene.
MOORE: Yeah, this scene was tough.
GRAPHIA: We argued about this in the writers' room. We had some really spirited discussions, and a lot of it was about the logic of the scene because when you're reading the book, you don't make those kind of logic, it doesn't trip you up, because you're reading and your mind just fills in the blanks. But we did have questions which were like in the book, Master Raymond is the one who pulls the poison out of his sleeve and says, "Let's drink this." He comes up with the test. We couldn't have him have the idea for the test, 'cause he's one of the suspects.
MOORE: Yeah, it seemed odd to us dramatically, like well if he says that, doesn't the King go, "Shut the fuck up."
GRAPHIA: Yeah, exactly.
MOORE: Right, you know, "We're not doing that. What, are you crazy?"
GRAPHIA: So we, we needed a way to make it, we kept saying, it needs to be Claire, it needs to be Claire, but how? She doesn't even have sleeves to pull it out of. But then that's when we came up with the idea to do... That they had rounded up the evidence, like a real trial. "Here's exhibit A, exhibit B. Here's the stuff we took from the apothecary and from St. Germain's home," and Claire remembers, when she sees this, that the bitter cascara is there and it gives her the perfect way to introduce this test.
MOORE: 'Cause she's trying to get them both off.
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: She's trying to get them free.
GRAPHIA: She doesn't want either one to die. Even though she's mad at the Comte, she doesn't wanna be responsible for this cold-blooded death and she knows that the bitter cascara will make them both sick.
MOORE: And then there was a question, "Well, then how does Raymond get the poison into the cup?" And then we came up with sleight of hand... And then it was, okay, well we better set that up so then I think we had to shoot...
GRAPHIA: In Episode 4, which I wrote, we purposefully added that he does this sleight-of-hand trick...
MOORE: Now was that done after the fact or did we pick it up later?
GRAPHIA: No, we put it in 'cause I was writing this while I was shooting that.
MOORE: Is that right? They were both...
GRAPHIA: I was writing this while we were shooting that and I went, "Oh, my God, we need him to know sleight of hand" and I added it to the other script at the last minute. And...
MOORE: This is the only time that St. Germain speaks English. 'Cause we got into the scene and if we didn't make this transition, the entire scene was gonna be in French.
GRAPHIA: Right. We knew it was a lot of French.
MOORE: That would work, but it kind of did feel like it was gonna take you out of the drama of it with just subtitling everything through the whole scene.
GRAPHIA: Right. Yeah, so it was clever to have the King just like, "Speak English to my guests."
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: "You fool." And he's pissed. I mean St. Germain, he can't control his temper. He's very angry. Claire has to pretend that she doesn't even know very well Master Raymond who just saved her life, as did Monsieur Forez who is the king's executioner. We added him to the scene at the last minute as well, and he was at the top of the episode saving Claire, you know, trying to save her and her baby, but saving Claire. Now he's here to kill someone. But they all have to pretend they don't know each other. And here's where, you know, we decided to have St. Germain cop to the fact that he tried to poison Claire, because then she's not gonna feel quite as bad 'cause she didn't know for sure that he tried to kill her but...
MOORE: Yeah, it was tricky stuff trying to like...
GRAPHIA: Very tricky scene.
MOORE: Where... Where is Claire's heart in this? What is her intention? What is...
GRAPHIA: She's not a murderer.
MOORE: She's not a cold-blooded killer.
GRAPHIA: Even if she thought... No.
MOORE: So in this moment, you wanna... We needed these events to happen. But we just had to sort of step through it emotionally and under... And get clarity on where she was.
GRAPHIA: Right and Master Raymond, he's the one that knows. This king is not gonna let someone out of here without dying. There's got to be an end to the show. And Claire's trying to save them both with the bitter cascara, but that's ultimately why he puts the poison and he's like "Listen, it's not gonna be me, so it's gonna have to be St. Germain." And I think maybe he even feels a little bad about it, but he knows what Claire doesn't know which is this king is not gonna be satisfied till someone's dead on the floor. And so Claire, having taken the, you know... She took a cue from Master Raymond's playbook with the cascara and now, you know, she had no choice. We, otherwise... Someone was gonna get bit by a poisonous snake.
MOORE: Yeah. I think we started... Didn't we have more to do with the snakes for a while? I can't remember.
GRAPHIA: In the book they actually do... I believe they do handle the snake.
MOORE: Maybe it's in the book I'm remembering.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, they... I think take the snakes out and handle them. But we... We didn't even have the snake in the first draft. We knew it was gonna be hard to play and hard to even find a snake in Scotland. They don't even have snakes over there. But David Brown, again, David Brown, he's... God bless him, we ask impossible stuff and he always tries. He's a great producer to work with, because he always really tries to get the writers what we want. If we're like...
MOORE: Snake in Scotland, no problem.
GRAPHIA: "Please, please, we need a snake," and he was like, "Oh, for God's sakes. All right, I'll try..." and he got this snake. The snake actually, a little tidbit here, I think that little tongue...
MOORE: Yeah, the tongue is CG.
GRAPHIA: Thing was added. Because the snake was... He wasn't cooperating. I think he had stage fright.
MOORE: He was bored.
GRAPHIA: He was bored. He was like, "Get on with the show." He wasn't moving and we didn't want it to look like a fake snake. 'Cause it was indeed a real snake. So we added a special effect of the snake flicking his tongue.
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: And then he made it into the main titles. Such a handsome devil.
MOORE: I know now he's like, now he's a regular.
GRAPHIA: Now we have to pay him a lot more.
MOORE: He's one of our main cast. Yeah, his... His price just went way up. One of the things we did talk about that I don't think we ever quite sold in the series, was setting up this idea of the King's interest in the occult and marrying St. Germain to that. And trying to sort of... I remember having a lot of discussions and story points in the room about trying to lay in little subplots of that, that not just La Dame Blanche but that the King and St. Germain and Master Raymond were all sort of involved in certain occult-ish things and black arts along the way. We kept writing little pieces of it and they would always fall out of scripts, and I think it's kind of there now, it's like...
GRAPHIA: I know.
MOORE: A suggestion of it. But it's still kind of...
GRAPHIA: I noticed some of the reviewers are like, again, I keep mentioning this, but it's just because people have to be patient, you know? Some of the reviews were saying, "Well, there's this little subplot, mini subplot about the dark arts that's not going anywhere." And actually it's going somewhere. It's going somewhere pretty big. But this is the kind of show that we roll it out slowly. This is not network television. It's supposed to be that these things are feathered in. And I'm glad that they notice it. But I... I wish they would wait till you see...
MOORE: There's just so much going on, too.
GRAPHIA: It's a very complex show. We've got a lot and we try to get in everything we can from the books, and that we wanna put in. And it's a... It's complex material. Everyone does such a great job here. The King is great. St. Germain is really great. He...
MOORE: It's a compelling scene. It's a long scene.
GRAPHIA: It's a really long scene.
MOORE: In one set and they don't... There's not even a lot of movement. There's a nice little visual effects shot of the crystal changing. I remember when we started talking about the crystal, Terry said to me, "Does the crystal have to change? Is it... It's gonna be a special effect, right? Right? This is... I don't have to get a crystal that changes, do I?" It's like, "No, you may have to do one." And she's like, "No, no." "I'm kidding, of course, it's gonna be CG, when it's..."
GRAPHIA: You know, if we told her to find that, she probably could.
MOORE: She probably would have, yeah.
GRAPHIA: Knowing her, because she finds some amazing stuff. It wouldn't have surprised me. Oh, and now Claire knows that that... She knows it's poison and she... She tries not to hand it to him and she... She hates this guy but... And he knows it. I love this moment 'cause they're just... They all know what's going on.
MOORE: Yeah, everybody knows.
GRAPHIA: Everybody knows.
MOORE: Everybody except the King.
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: 'Cause he still thinks it's a magic cup. It's like...
GRAPHIA: I know. Oh!
MOORE: I know, he's so good here.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, he's...
MOORE: He's so good. I just... I love watching him in this moment as he has to accept his own death.
GRAPHIA: He was the nicest guy, too.
MOORE: He's really nice.
GRAPHIA: And very handsome. We hated to kill him, actually. I wish he could have just stayed in the show.
MOORE: The ladies across the production really were like...
GRAPHIA: The ladies loved him.
MOORE: "Is Stanley here today?"
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: He actually improvised that line.
MOORE: Did he really?
GRAPHIA: Yeah, he did. I had a line that was like...
MOORE: No kidding.
GRAPHIA: The F word and, you know...
MOORE: You can say fuck.
GRAPHIA: I know... I... yeah.
MOORE: He improvised it? I didn't realize he improvised that.
GRAPHIA: He was supposed to say, like, "Fuck you both. I'll see you in hell," or something. And he, he was... He came up with something a little more colorful in French.
MOORE: Yeah, that's pretty colorful.
GRAPHIA: And I was really happy with that. I'll take credit for it.
MOORE: When did you find out? Did he just say it in French and later you were like, "What does he say there?"
GRAPHIA: I saw it in dailies. And I'm like, "What's he saying?" And they're like, "I think he's saying something about sucking the cock of the devil." I'm like, "Oh, awesome." He dies good, too.
MOORE: It's a good death.
GRAPHIA: What is it, die young and leave a good-looking corpse?
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: Someone said that.
MOORE: That's our Count.
GRAPHIA: I like that Raymond. He kind of looks like, "I wish I didn't have to do that, but thank God it wasn't me."
MOORE: Yeah, "But better him than me."
GRAPHIA: Yeah. And then I... The King just steps over him, very callous, very French. "I'm the king, I can do what I want." And then, you know, I love when Claire says about the line from the movie... I didn't know if you would go for that.
MOORE: Yeah, yeah.
GRAPHIA: I was like, "Is this too corny? I'm gonna put it in and see if he likes it," 'cause you sometimes like stuff like that but sometimes you nix it.
MOORE: I do, yeah. I know it's...
GRAPHIA: But you said I love... In all your notes, you had a bunch of notes and then there was just one note that said, "Love the line from the Oz," so we kept it in. I think it wasn't a favorite.
MOORE: I got a couple of notes trying to cut it.
GRAPHIA: There were some notes.
MOORE: I just wouldn't cut it.
GRAPHIA: I loved it.
MOORE: It was a lovely line.
GRAPHIA: I'm glad, I'm glad we kept it in. I feel like that's what they are, they're out of The Wizard of Oz, her and Master Raymond, and they have this just special kind of relationship.
MOORE: This as a whole is like, you know, Dorothy in Oz quality to Claire's entire story.
GRAPHIA: Is it... Was it the Tin Man or the Scarecrow that she said that to?
MOORE: The Scarecrow.
GRAPHIA: Now I'm gonna show... Okay, the Scarecrow. See I didn't even know which character, but I knew it...
MOORE: 'Cause she met him first and he was the one that she bonded with the longest.
GRAPHIA: Scarecrow. Yeah. And then, of course, Claire thought, when he says, "The matter of the payment," she's like, "Wait a minute, I thought that..."
MOORE: I know, that's the...
GRAPHIA: "I thought this was the payment. What are we doing now?"
MOORE: I love that, too. Like, "But I thought... So, this is not over?"
GRAPHIA: And we also had a whole section where he puts rose oil on his hands and he prepares her and he... There was a whole lead up to it. But we cut it and we kind of went straight for the act, the deed. I love the "thought of England" line. I couldn't resist that.
MOORE: I know.
GRAPHIA: But we did have many discussions about exactly how many thrusts there should be.
MOORE: How many thrusts... Yeah. This is television, boys and girls. 'Cause you actually have discussions where you're counting thrusts.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, well we didn't want... He's not really doing this for pleasure, really, even though the chapter is "His Majesty's Pleasure." He's doing it to sort of mark his territory and say, "I claim this from you. This is my payment."
MOORE: Yep.
GRAPHIA: And so, it's not really about lovemaking or even sex. It's just about domination there. And, you know, he takes her and it's over and he gets dressed and he... She fixes herself up there, and I love this scene.
MOORE: I know, it's a really nice moment.
GRAPHIA: And the best thing coming up is that she takes the orange when she leaves.
MOORE: Right. I forget about that.
GRAPHIA: And she improvised that.
MOORE: Did she?
GRAPHIA: She just grabbed the orange off the table and stalks out with it and I thought, "Oh, She's... That's Claire leaving with at least part of her dignity intact."
MOORE: And he's like, "Okay, you can go now."
GRAPHIA: Oh, yeah, he just does the hand motions. I love his little... Lionel had these... He had the king down, the hands.
MOORE: Yeah, I'm sorry to see the King go. The King... This is the King's last scene.
GRAPHIA: It's almost worth going back to France.
MOORE: I know. And then they go back for a wacky adventure.
GRAPHIA: Ah. Yeah, there she goes with her orange.
MOORE: See ya.
GRAPHIA: Little souvenir. This is the walk of shame. I had wanted her to walk, I wrote it originally that she walks through the streets of Paris. She walks all the way home with the walk of shame. But we couldn't afford to do it through the whole streets of Prague, so she walks through the library.
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: But it's enough. You get it. Yeah.
MOORE: It sells it.
GRAPHIA: She's lost a piece of her soul here. You know, she's... It cost her something, it really cost her something.
MOORE: She really paid a price.
GRAPHIA: Ah. The next scene is actually some genius editing of yours, because... And yours and Mikey O'Halloran, who does a great job. There was much more on the head of this, but you had the idea to really not see Jamie's face till...
MOORE: Till much later.
GRAPHIA: Later in the... Much later in the scene.
MOORE: 'Cause we haven't seen him in the whole episode and you're so firmly in Claire's point of view, I didn't wanna embrace Jamie too quickly. I wanted to still be with her and at first, he's a figure and we can't see his face. She can see his face but I wanted the audience to be emotionally distant from him, be with Claire and kind of feel like, "Yeah, Jamie, fuck you. Thanks for making all this happen," you know?
GRAPHIA: Right.
MOORE: And just not, not being willing to embrace him and then choosing a moment, once we move into the parlor when we finally reveal, you know, then you see Jamie.
GRAPHIA: And the most heartbreaking line is, "I don't even know if it was a boy or a girl."
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: This edit enabled us to start on that which I thought worked great. I didn't miss any of the dialogue that we cut. It's rare for me to say that.
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: We actually cut a lot of the dialogue out of this scene.
MOORE: We did. We went... It was a great scene. It was great... It was a really well-written scene. It wasn't... It was all great dialogue, but there was a power to the silence between these two characters, and the more you played this and just looks... And letting the actors just carry it in their behavior, it really just got stronger and stronger.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, I think in the first draft, it was even more of a fight where they go from room to room and follow each other and argue and blame each other, and then I just threw it all out and started over because really, it is a powerful... More powerful, the silence, the sadness and grief and power of it is just... This grief-stricken couple and here's where... Now we're gonna go back and see why Claire was so angry and couldn't forgive him, because we didn't see what... Everything she went through. We cut away before we saw what she really went through, which was holding her dead baby. And then we understand maybe, all the people who love Jamie so much and are mad at Claire for being mad at him, now will understand why she could have hated him so much.
MOORE: Well, it's also great just dramatically in the show as a piece of filmed entertainment, you know, now the audience, it's been quite a while since the audience sat there with Claire losing the baby emotionally. Yeah, she can talk about it and remind us, "Oh, that's right, yeah, I remember how upset she was." But flashing back and not just repeating the scenes that we'd already seen, but flashing back and showing an even more dramatic section of it and a more powerful one, again, pulls the audience back into that emotion at this point in the story so you're... You really experience the heartbreak of it.
GRAPHIA: 'Cause for her, it is right there on the surface.
MOORE: It's present. It's very present.
GRAPHIA: It's not something that she's forgotten. It's right there. And it'll be there for years. It'll be there always.
MOORE: And I remember when... In the first cut, we played around with whether you could hear her or not in the flashback. Whether you heard her calling out for the baby or not.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, we'd already seen it, so it's more powerful silent. And whenever you're that mad at someone, it's usually because there's something inside you... You're mad at yourself about something. And you haven't copped to it yet, that you played a role in it and that's what I was trying to go for with Claire is that she's so angry at... It's like a wounded animal that just bites and lashes out at whatever comes near them. When you see that she had to hold this baby, her and Jamie's baby... And Cait is just...
MOORE: Oh, she's fantastic.
GRAPHIA: This... We wanted to see just her face telling this story.
MOORE: And he's great. Look at... He has... You know, he has a tough role here, 'cause he just has to react. You know, it's her story and he has to react. But he's really holding your feeling in every take, in every cutaway shot.
GRAPHIA: Yeah. 'Cause he's in as much pain as she is. He lost a child, too, and he's blaming himself, and I just love the idea that it... Even when I read the book, and then the book has many... There's many more chapters that we had to, again, condense this. We couldn't go on horse rides and do the nettles and do some of the things that I loved in the book. But we had only an hour, and I thought, the thing I took away from the book was her realization, I wanted to expand on that more 'cause I didn't quite delve into that as much. But this was partly her fault. She shouldn't have asked him this, this... She asked him an impossible thing, to not kill the man that had raped him and wrecked his life. And then she went to the duel to stop it. She put their baby in danger. It's partly on her, and I wanted her to realize that they share the blame for this, and that and that that's really the only way that they can forgive each other and move on. And this is my favorite scene.
MOORE: Oh, I know, I love this scene. This is so great.
GRAPHIA: I wanted it to be Louise that comes and has to take the baby from her.
MOORE: The pregnant Louise.
GRAPHIA: The only one, the pregnant Louise and that Claire, I mean we've played Louise so flighty, so gossipy and shallow, but here she does a good turn for someone who helped her in her time of need. And here we see the real, you know, the steel character of Louise. And Claire realizing that there's life inside Louise, there, that is not what she's holding in her arms. And that it's, that, you know, but Claire's almost... She's like a zombie. She's in this deep denial of like, "Look how beautiful she is. She looks like an angel." And Louise doesn't say, "No she's not." She says, "Yes, she is beautiful." And she knows, woman to woman, how to... How to tell her, how to play into what Claire's feeling, and yet be kind and firm with her all at the same time. And when she says it's time, I always knew that, that she would say, "It's time," and take the baby from her and Claire would release the baby to Louise, where she wouldn't have with any of the nuns, who she had been fighting.
MOORE: The line that breaks my heart is when she says, "Here's ten fingers and ten toes." That's just...
GRAPHIA: Oh. It's so... Yeah. You wanted the baby to have little wisps of red hair, so that the audience could really feel that this is the child of the characters that we love so much. And it's such a tragedy. It's just so devastating and I, I just don't even know if I can watch this. I may have to cover my eyes.
MOORE: I know. I cry every time... I cry every time I watch this scene.
GRAPHIA: I know. Cait here just... When she hands the baby back, and she just falls over. Ah. I wanted... I wanted Claire singing to the baby, too, because don't forget, Claire lost her own mother when she was five, and the only memory she remembers is her mother singing to her, and really that's all she had to give that baby before she lost her forever, is, "I'm gonna sing you a song."
MOORE: Where did that song come from?
GRAPHIA: I googled songs of the era.
MOORE: Of the era? Of the '40s?
GRAPHIA: And of the era that would have been her mother's era.
MOORE: Oh, her mother's era.
GRAPHIA: And I found that song. I wanted it to be a whimsical, fun song as opposed to a sad song, because that would play against it and be even sadder.
MOORE: Yeah, I love that choice. It was a great...
GRAPHIA: Yeah.
MOORE: I remember when you turned this second draft in, and you were in Scotland and I came into the writers' office and I...
GRAPHIA: I was terrified that you would hate the script.
MOORE: I just walked up and kissed you.
GRAPHIA: And you didn't say anything. And you just walked up and grabbed me, and then I was like, "Oh, thank God. I thought he... His face."
MOORE: It was so... I was so moved reading it, and it was just so lovely and so deep and I just... I was just so proud of you because it was...
GRAPHIA: Well, thank you.
MOORE: You just really grasped the essence of what this show was supposed to be. It was just a fantastic script.
GRAPHIA: I did but it's because, you know, I have to say, when you told me, make it... It's all about the baby, that was the essence of it, and that inspired me to dig, you know, dig deeper and get to this place. So... Yeah, I think Jamie was not expecting her to take the blame for this at all and...
MOORE: I know.
GRAPHIA: And this is why they can stay together, 'cause they speak the truth to each other. She's saying "We can't even blame Randall for this."
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: And... I think... I mean, a lot of couples that lose a child don't stay together because the grief... They can't comfort each other. They're both too grief-stricken, and it either breaks you up or makes you stronger. And we wanted to show that this is something they could survive. And I wanted... You know, like Master Raymond, when he was saying, "Call for Jamie," when he was healing her, he was sparking in her that spark that he knows that she loves Jamie so much, that here in my mind, and I don't know if people will get this, it's like Jamie becomes, in a way, the heron because he says, he says, "The only way we can carry this, is to carry it together, 'cause we're the only two people in the world that know the pain of losing Faith." And when he says, "Let's keep going and carry it together," he becomes that heron, and that's why they can go on as a couple. I think this is what we love about Claire and Jamie. She said she slept with the King and, again, in my first draft, that was a much bigger deal. They fought about it and it... You know, you said, "Who cares if she slept with the King? They lost their baby," and I love that, you know, I took that advice and I went, you know what? This is a footnote. It's nothing.
MOORE: Yeah. In the scheme of things...
GRAPHIA: In the scheme of things, it's nothing. So she just kind of goes, "Yeah, there's this other thing. I slept with the King." And you see one little moment of Jamie's face like... "Oh." I mean, of course...
MOORE: Yeah, it registers.
GRAPHIA: It's like... It registers and it hurts him, but he's man enough to say, "Not gonna dwell on these little, you know, frivolous... issues." This is...
MOORE: Compared to losing Faith. That was... That's just not the thing.
GRAPHIA: And it was funny, because I had originally named the episode "His Majesty's Pleasure." It was just flashier and it was... It was kind of more about the king part and all. And when I did the rewrite and changed it to be more about the baby, when I went to look back in the chapters, I'd actually written in the margins, "Episode entitled 'Faith,'" and put Faith in quotes. I'd written that in the margins when I first read the book.
MOORE: Oh, no kidding.
GRAPHIA: Meaning I wanted to write this episode and I'd... I had named it "Faith" before I ever even...
MOORE: Oh, wow.
GRAPHIA: But I had forgotten about it, so when you said, "Make it about the baby," and I went back and I went, "Yes, yes."
MOORE: Oh, that's fascinating.
GRAPHIA: "It has to be 'Faith.'" And actually, I retyped it, like, five minutes before I turned it in to you. I ran to the computer and changed the title of the episode to "Faith" and it just felt right. It made everything fall into place.
MOORE: It was perfect.
GRAPHIA: It's a new script, it's about something new. And this, like I said, I knew from Episode 5, when we chose the apostle spoons, I wanted Jamie to leave this on the grave and leave a little bit of... Leave St. Andrew, which is leave a little bit of Scotland, with his daughter who has... Who he has to leave in Paris.
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: I love what Claire's wearing, I love the veil that Terry made for her.
MOORE: That's a beautiful costume.
GRAPHIA: And we had her sort of standing back, 'cause this is really Jamie... Jamie's moment to grieve 'cause he hasn't really gotten to grieve, and he says, "We'll go back to Scotland, but I have to see Faith first." And he goes there and the two of them... I mean, this episode actually had a different ending. It had several more scenes which you will... You will see next week. But they just... They weren't meant for this episode. This episode was meant to end here.
MOORE: This is the... This is the end of the story. It's really here.
GRAPHIA: Yeah, and as they pull up, I didn't ask for this, but someone snuck a statue of the Virgin Mary in this graveyard, which I thought was a great touch. I don't know if that was Gary or Gina or Metin, who did a wonderful job of directing. But I love this shot and as it opens up, you see the Virgin looking down.
MOORE: Oh, that is nice.
GRAPHIA: I love it. It's the most favorite thing I've ever written, and the best thing, without a doubt, in my whole career.
MOORE: It's the best episode of the season. I mean, just hands down.
GRAPHIA: Well, thank you. We have a lot of great episodes so I...
MOORE: There's still some great stuff coming up.
GRAPHIA: Really great stuff coming up but this one...
MOORE: But this one is special.
GRAPHIA: This one's very special. Very personal to me and will always be in our hearts.
MOORE: Yeah.
GRAPHIA: Thank you for letting me write this one.
MOORE: No, thank you. And thank all of you for joining us. So that'll do it for Episode 207. And we will talk to you next week on 208. Until then, good night and good luck.
GRAPHIA: Thank you, everybody.