Transcription[]
The following is a transcription of the Official Outlander Podcast episode 203, "Useful Occupations and Deceptions." It is provided here for the purposes of study, criticism, and accessibility.
RONALD D. MOORE: Hello, and welcome to the podcast for Episode 203, "Useful Occupations and Deceptions." I'm Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the Outlander television series. And I'm joined today by Anne Kenney, my fellow executive producer and the writer of this episode. Hello, Anne.
ANNE KENNEY: Hello, Ron. How are you?
MOORE: Good. All right, well, this is an interesting show. This one went through a lot of changes. There's something about the third episode of a season that sort of compels us to work it over and over again in multiple ways.
KENNEY: Yes, and I wrote the third episode of the first season, too.
MOORE: Yes, this is true. You did do that. Oh, well, the first thing in my notes is that we've changed the main title here, quite a bit. We decided to incorporate a lot more pieces of French imagery into the main title and then transition into a French language version of the song. I just thought this was an interesting idea to acknowledge that the series was changing and evolving and move the audience more clearly into the French part of the story and drop some of the Scottish-only imagery that defined the main titles since Season 1. But rest assured, some of the Scots imagery will return and there will be more things as the title evolves over the course of Season 2. I believe the main title card was shot by Matt. I think Matt did this.
KENNEY: I think so. We spend a lot of time mulling over and talking about what those main title cards are gonna be. They take up a fair amount of time.
MOORE: Yes. Much to the chagrin of the entire production team, saying, "Oh, my God, do we still have to do these fucking main title cards?"
KENNEY: And honestly, yeah, they're hard for me to think of, too, so I'm always happy when somebody else comes up with a good idea.
MOORE: Now, this opening, as I recall, this was one of the things that stayed throughout all the different drafts, right? Didn't we always have this idea of Jamie coming home, and then this was to establish that, oh, this is his new life with Prince Charles.
KENNEY: And to kind of, in this episode, as the title sort of tells us, to also establish that while Claire is very much behind this plan that they have, he's really in the position to be much more the actor in this plan, and she has to play a little bit more of a backseat role, which is hard for Claire, 'cause that's not really what she does.
MOORE: Yeah, this was... It was picking up on a thematic aspect of the book, was that when Claire, in these many months that Claire is in Paris, she was bored and she was at loose ends because Jamie, in the book version of events, is told from Claire's point of view. And Jamie just keeps leaving and having these meetings off-camera with Prince Charles, and working at the wine business and then coming back. And Claire was left to her own devices to a large extent, and trying to become part of the social fabric of Paris of the day, but also finding a lot less satisfaction in that role.
KENNEY: And I think one of the things that was tricky for us when we were trying to do this is that we wanted to explore what you just described without her seeming ... We kept struggling between, well, but we don't want her to be like, "I'm bored," when he's so involved in this big heavy thing, so we didn't... It was really trying to find our way through that to make you sympathetic to her, without her seeming like she was complaining somehow.
MOORE: Yeah.
KENNEY: At some point, and I think it's in this scene, he talks about a mad gallop here and a mad gallop here, and just watching it and also remembering writing it, wow, there is so much information that we're communicating in these scenes that it really felt like a mad gallop as you're writing it - like, "Ah!"
MOORE: This was shot as part of the super block of three at the beginning, right? So this is still in that massive shoot that we were doing to start the season with.
KENNEY: And I was not there for the shooting of this one.
MOORE: Right.
KENNEY: These costumes are just, oh, my God, all the way through this, one dress after another, she looks so amazing and so does he. I miss his kilts, honestly. But he looked pretty darn good.
MOORE: Yeah, it's amazing. It is a bit of a fashion show. Like one thing after another, and a lady of her station at this point would have had a fairly wide wardrobe.
KENNEY: Yeah, and the art direction, the apartment is so beautiful. It was fun to go, when I went, and this was still up, this set, and it's spectacular.
MOORE: Yeah, it was a great set.
KENNEY: This is one of those things... Sawney is one of those things that... Sometimes, we take things from different books and you'll find them, I think, sometimes people go, "Oh, I missed this or I missed that," and I would say to them, "Well, don't give up hope because, man, we pull things from all over the place. 'Cause now Sawney has made an appearance here but I'm not sure he was actually in this...
MOORE: I don't think he was.
KENNEY: No, I think he... Originally, in the books, he tells her about Sawney back at Lallybroch in the first book. So we brought him back here.
MOORE: Yeah, I think we were looking for something for Fergus to steal. Right? That's how it came up. We were saying, "Wouldn't it be good if he stole something from Jamie, too? What could he steal from Jamie?" Oh, somebody said, "Sawney the snake." And I think somebody said it as a joke, and we all went, "No, actually, let's make it Sawney the snake."
KENNEY: I love this scene, and this is one of those things that for me as a writer is really fun because we took the discussion between Mary and Claire about what French men do in bed - it is in the book, but in the book, it's just the two of them. So it was fun to include Louise who's sort of acting out the stuff that is in Claire's head. Do you know what I mean? We get to see it dramatized. Plus, we had a piece of information at the end of this that we needed to get across, so it's that fun kind of puzzle-y thing, where it's very satisfying, at least for me, and I think probably for you too, as a writer, to, "I've got these elements that need to happen in this scene and how can I do it in the most elegant way?" And I was happy with how this turned out.
MOORE: And I love Mary. She's tiny. The actress is tiny.
KENNEY: Rosie is... She is really tiny. We always joke that we're just gonna put her in our pocket. She's tiny. And Claire Sermonne, who plays Louise, is also terrific. I really love her.
MOORE: Yeah, she's wonderful.
6:48 MOORE: "The moon."
KENNEY: And see this is where we had to... We wanted to make the connection for Claire that she remembers where Mary's from and so we were able to... That's how we got there, was like, "Oh, I'm from this place," and that makes Claire remember this... And, yeah, I thought that... I was happy how that all worked out.
MOORE: Yeah, and I remember us going through many iterations of this.
KENNEY: Oh, yeah.
MOORE: "What was it that triggers Claire to remember and how do we get to that place?" And it was just a lot of conversation.
KENNEY: Yep. And at one point, I think she saw this it was in Master Raymond's shop, he had a Bible...
MOORE: Yeah, that's right, it was in Master Raymond's.
KENNEY: Yeah... And the other thing I like is - I really like how we've continuously fleshed out the relationship between Claire and Frank, and you really see that that was... They loved each other. I think sometimes when you have romantic triangles in stories and movies, one of the characters is kind of a paper tiger, where you think, "Oh, well, he's never gonna be the winner."
MOORE: Yeah, like, "That's not a legitimate choice."
KENNEY: Yeah, and it diminishes the character, I think, and makes the challenge less, so I'm happy that we've been able to do that.
MOORE: Yeah, it feels like a real triangle.
KENNEY: This, also, was a sequence that the editing - and I think you must have constructed this, too - this was a giant voiceover speech where she's doing all this explain-o and it was just, when I wrote it, she was in the carriage and she's just... You're hearing the voiceover. And when I saw this cut, I was like, "Oh my God, that's great because you're giving us all these visual cues to help us track this story."
MOORE: Yeah. It was tough to track it, otherwise, 'cause it was just so much information and, again, it's voiceover, so you're not even watching her talk and tracking all the names and the people and trying to keep it clear in your head.
KENNEY: No, that was a really great thing to do.
MOORE: He's great. I love this line coming up where he says, "The search for the little snake continues."
8:50 MOORE: Where did the idea of Murtagh and Suzette come from? That was something early on, wasn't it?
KENNEY: Well, I was thinking about that. One thing that we did talk about at one point was that Murtagh would have sort of an unrequited love for Mary.
MOORE: Oh, that's right! We were gonna have him ... Yeah, that's right, he was gonna have a thing for Mary.
KENNEY: Yeah, which I loved.
MOORE: Yeah, I did, too.
KENNEY: It's kind of the... that kind of Jane Eyre - the gruff guy longing for the sweet girl. And we actually... We had that carded out and all of that. I do not remember why. Probably real estate as much as anything. And then we came up with Suzette. And, again, this, for me, is one of those scenes where the purpose of this scene, in terms of the plot, was that Claire has to tell Murtagh, "Black Jack's alive. I haven't told Jamie." And he tells her it's okay. And then we embellished it all by giving him Suzette and having the discussion going toward, "Um, gee, do you disapprove?" And then, in the next scene, we needed her to get to Master Raymond, so we have her say, "I'll go get some birth control for Suzette." You know what I mean? And I love that kind of stuff where you ...
MOORE: It all played together.
KENNEY: 'Cause you do have to have the connections. And, again, Duncan is wonderful. He's fabulous.
MOORE: I know, and they had such good chemistry in all of their scenes. I was happy it was like, "Yeah, let's keep playing ... "Let's play some more Murtagh and Claire stuff."
KENNEY: And actually, it was funny. I was thinking about this, 'cause going down the road, in a later episode, there is an almost homage to that notion of Murtagh and Mary... ... I don't wanna blow it.
MOORE: Oh, right. I know what you're talking about.
KENNEY: Which I wrote and I don't think I even thought about it, but in retrospect I go, "Oh, that must have still been kicking around in my head."
MOORE: Yeah, I bet you're right. This is one of those annoying things that happens sometimes in production. It's annoying to the writers. There was a pass we worked on, on this scene, where I specifically said, "Claire and Murtagh go out onto the balcony to have this conversation." Because Gary Steele, our production designer, had built this balcony off of this main room where you could stand out on the courtyard. It was a practical balcony and it was cool and no one had used it, and I said, "Let's get out. Let's use this fucking balcony." And, of course, then the director just kept it all in the room. And then as a result, the balcony is never used in the entire show.
KENNEY: That's hilarious.
MOORE: We built this stupid thing, and it's really cool, and it was out in the courtyard, and I was like, "This is the chance. We're gonna use it." And, of course, "Eh, let's keep 'em inside."
KENNEY: It's honestly amazing how often that happens. When you have a set and you think, "Oh, we need this and this and this, and we're gonna go over here," and then you don't ever use it.
MOORE: Yeah, I know. You build all these things into the sets and then the next thing you know, you just never even shoot that side. I feel like we shot, except for the balcony, we probably shot everything of this apartment. 'Cause the main staircase is used, the courtyard, the hallway to the main staircase. There's this room, the parlor. The bedroom and the dining room are the same part of the set, they're just redressed to be the dining room or the... The dining room or the bedroom, sorry. And then there's a hallway that goes all the way around all the sets.
KENNEY: Right, and later in this you'll see that we use the hallway in a really interesting way, where Claire's in the room and Jamie's in the hallway, and we're going through the doorways, which is cool.
12:19 KENNEY: Yeah, I don't think... I'm trying to remember, 'cause I know we talked a lot about what was Murtagh's reaction gonna be when she tells him that Black Jack's alive, and should she or shouldn't she tell Jamie. 'Cause I think, again, this is another one that... I don't think this is in the book. I mean, Black Jack being alive is in the book. But, no, you know what? In the book, she and Jamie... Don't they see him at the same time? Or they see Alex at the same time, who in the book, looks exactly like Black Jack.
MOORE: Yeah, they both encounter Alex at Versailles, and Claire faints, 'cause she thinks it's Black Jack, 'cause he looks so much like him. But in the show, it was just, we couldn't go to that card again. We couldn't have Tobias play three roles. That was just... That was pushing it.
KENNEY: No, which is one of the interesting things, again, in the adaptation process. This room is fantastic.
MOORE: This room is in Prague. This was a real library in Prague. There's two main rooms to it. There's another room next to this one that's also spectacular. But this was an unbelievable location.
KENNEY: Again, this is another one of those scenes that we had a lot of information we had to get across, so how do you do it in an interesting way? And also, I don't play chess, so for me, it's sort of like... If you've ever written on a medical show or something, where the part where they're talking about the medical, you just write "tech, tech, tech, tech." And somebody else comes along. And this one, you came along and came up with the...
MOORE: With the chess...
KENNEY: The Spanish Game or something?
MOORE: The Spanish Game.
KENNEY: Which I... Yeah. I think I know things like check, checkmate.
MOORE: On Star Trek, I used to just literally... Yeah, I would do the same thing, you write "tech." "Mr. La Forge, tech the tech of the main engine." "But, Captain, if we tech the tech, the tech will overload ." And then Data would say, "But, Captain, there is a theory. If you tech the tech, it will actually..." And you're just... It's a page of tech.
KENNEY: Well, because usually also when you use your technical advisers, like going forward when we get into the scene with Master Raymond, and she's asking him about all the herbs and what they do, you often go to your technical adviser and say, "This is what I need to have happen in this scene. They need to discuss this. It needs to do that. So I need you to help me figure out what those things are." And you're always lucky when you get somebody who can really roll with it.
MOORE: Yeah, 'cause a lot of it is just rhythm. It's the rhythm of the dialog. He needs to say this kind of thing and that, and it needs to make sense. But it's really about the rhythm of the scene and what it's accomplishing, above and beyond the technicalities.
KENNEY: Yeah. How was it... You were in Prague. Were you in Prague?
MOORE: Not for the shoot, but I went to Prague for the initial scout.
KENNEY: So what was your sense... How much of our crew from Scotland went to Prague?
MOORE: Not many. The key department heads went, and I think each department sent a few key players, hair and makeup, and people from art department, people from costume. And then, there were a lot of local hires in Prague, 'cause there's a fairly substantial film community in Prague, so a lot of people we could hire on the spot, and all the extras were obviously hired on the spot, and dressers and people, you know, the first set dec. But we had our people going there ahead of time, to set everything up, and then to be there on the day of filming as well.
KENNEY: Right, and did you have... Did you have a sense of how the Prague crew and extras and stuff compared to Scotland ... Not in a negative way, but was it... Were there things that were different about dealing with that?
MOORE: No, I didn't hear much of that. It seemed like they were familiar enough within the EU. They all work together a lot. There's a lot of productions moving back and forth. So I think everyone was kind of familiar with the conventions of filmmaking in Europe. And so I don't think there was that big of a cultural change. I think it was less dramatic than those of us coming from the US, going to England and realizing, "Oh, wait, there's different terminology and different customs and different things." I think within the European film community, they were all on the same page. This is actually a redress of the courtyard set at the Paris apartment. So this is supposed to be an outdoor market, outside of Master Raymond's, but this is actually a redress of our courtyard back on the soundstages in Cumbernauld. So Claire and Jamie's apartment is upstairs on the second floor of this set.
KENNEY: Hmm. The man who plays Raymond, Dominique Pinon, is that correct?
MOORE: Yes.
KENNEY: Is quite an accomplished French actor.
MOORE: Very much. Yeah.
KENNEY: He's very well known in France. And we have our lovely Stanley Weber as Le Comte. He's fabulous. Now he speaks... You were talking about French. I think what we decided was because of who he is, the Comte always speaks French.
MOORE: Yes.
KENNEY: There's a point at which he's told, "You speak English." But I don't think we... I think that's the only time...
MOORE: I think it's the only time.
KENNEY: Because we felt like he so dislikes Claire and Jamie, it was a part of his disdain for them that he could speak English, but he wasn't gonna make it easy for them.
MOORE: He wasn't going to. There was a whole beginning to this scene that got cut. I think it was cut for time. And as we were trying to get the show to time, I found a place to cut in much deeper with her just saying that line and having him up on the ladder. But there was a whole intro that they walked in and chatted, as I recall.
KENNEY: Yep. And again, this is one of those places where we got our technical adviser, our herbalist helped us out with what specifically they would be talking about.
MOORE: And this whole thing with the bitter cascara is drawn pretty much directly from the book as I recall. And I forgot to mention we're drinking, or I'm drinking Square One vodka today.
KENNEY: Oh, is that what you're doing? Okay.
MOORE: That's what I'm drinking. Instead of the Scotch whiskey. And the smoking lamp is out.
KENNEY: I love her cloak here. It makes me think of the one from French Lieutenant's Woman, where she puts that big hood over her head. That's fabulous.
MOORE: Yeah, it's a great cloak.
KENNEY: What happens to all these costumes? Um, we won't go back to France. She didn't bring them back with her. What do we do with all of these?
MOORE: They'll be kept and stored, and some will go on display, some will become part of the Sony archive, like the key ones. Like the big red dress from Versailles will be one of those iconic costumes that they'll save and show forever. Some of these might be repurposed, you know? Terry's talked about... Especially the extras' costumes from Paris and the day players' costumes from Paris can be repurposed and taken apart, put back together for America, when the show gets to America. Because essentially the colonies were using the same kind of clothing.
KENNEY: Right.
MOORE: And the principal characters, I think, it varies from costume to costume. And I don't know, like this particular one, is a good question. Would that be saved? Is that just gonna end up taken apart and becoming something else, or... I don't know.
KENNEY: Do you know if they, like when the show ends would these things then ... Would Sony rent them out to people or...
MOORE: They probably don't... I don't know that they rent them out. They might sell some of them, 'cause now it's become more of a thing in film and TV, that there's money to be made in auctioning off props and wardrobe.
KENNEY: Ah, that's interesting.
MOORE: So I wouldn't be surprised at all at the end of the show that some of these costumes are eventually auctioned off to private collectors. And people make an argument about, "Oh, that's terrible. The studios should keep all that. They should be kept in archives and..."
KENNEY: Where would they keep it?
MOORE: Yeah, and the truth is, the studios don't take care of this kind of stuff. They get thrown into warehouses and they get moth-eaten or rats take over.
KENNEY: Yeah.
MOORE: And actually costumes and props in private hands are probably much more cared for and looked after and preserved. This is also in Prague, the exterior of the Hopital is a street in Prague. The exterior of the Hópital is a street in Prague. We did surprisingly little VFX work here. There's just some stuff to take out, some 20th century... 21st century or 20th century antennas and gutters and that sort of thing. And we sort of dirtied up the buildings to make 'em look a little bit more worn, 'cause they were kind of clean when you shot them originally.
KENNEY: This whole thing at the L'Hopital des Anges... And I've just exhausted my French.
MOORE: Yes.
KENNEY: I love this in the book, and it was really fun to be able to do this. And the woman that we cast, Frances de la Tour, for Mother Hildegarde... And we saw a lot of really good actresses. People that you've seen before, and she's just terrific.
MOORE: She's wonderful. Now, the interior of the hospital is actually in Scotland. This is a cathedral that Gary Steele found. I can't remember the name of this.
KENNEY: I believe it's Glasgow Cathedral.
MOORE: Is it Glasgow Cathedral? Okay.
KENNEY: I think that's what... Yeah.
MOORE: And then we came in and brought in all the set dressing, and the props, and so forth.
KENNEY: This is one of those things, too, where, when you're writing, I'm obviously picturing in my head, between the book, which just describes things, and then you're picturing it, and then ... 'Cause this scene was also longer, remember it went on a lot longer where you see her going behind Sister Angelique and cleaning out bed pans and all that kind of stuff... ... And then you realize when you start to see it that so much of that, you get it without having all of that information. Do you know what I mean? Visually, it tells you so much. Even though I've been doing this for a long time and it's a visual medium, I still find myself, sometimes, you can really rely too much on the words or you feel like, "I've got... I've put too much in here," um, 'cause, again, I think you get all the value that we wanted, but it's in a little more condensed form.
MOORE: Yeah, that's true. It's always... It's a continual learning experience. You think you need to explain things and you think you need to talk about it. And then you see the film and you go, "No, I don't." You really don't.
KENNEY: Yeah, it's amazing. And you'd think after doing this, I mean, I've been doing this for 20-plus years, you think...
MOORE: Yeah, me too.
KENNEY: "Boy, next script, I'm not putting... There's no fat in that script."
MOORE: Yeah. No, you're just always writing too much.
KENNEY: Yeah, yeah.
MOORE: Yeah, it was that section got cut right there. There was an extended walk-and-talk with Claire following behind Sister Angelique and ...
KENNEY: Right, it would come right into this, but now we go... Yeah.
MOORE: This was a difficult piece of editing, actually. In that, the eye lines didn't match up, where Claire was looking off camera there, she was not actually looking at Mother Hildegarde in that shot. We stole that from an earlier scene, but we wanted ... 'Cause I think what Claire was looking at, she was looking at another patient being tended to by another person, but it was confusing in the way it cut together. So we had to manufacture that look from Claire to Hildegarde. And was this piece drawn from the book?
KENNEY: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
MOORE: Every time she puts her finger on this and tastes it, I'm kind of like... I flinch every time.
KENNEY: I just say to myself, "Urine is sterile. Urine is sterile."
MOORE: Yeah, it's...
KENNEY: Yeah, it's very weird, yeah. But that's right out of the book, though.
23:42 KENNEY: This is funny, too, because I remember... And I probably put it in the script that she steps aside, but I remember thinking, "God, I hope they have her speak quietly "to Mother Hildegarde," when she basically says, "This woman is not going to survive." And they did it beautifully, but there was a moment where I'm thinking, "Gosh, I hope she just doesn't say it out loud in front of this poor lady."
MOORE: Oh, yeah, she's done. "Why are you wasting bed space on this..."
KENNEY: And, of course, we didn't mention Bouton.
MOORE: Oh, Bouton. Yes.
KENNEY: Bouton, who is so cute.
MOORE: Bouton has his own fan club.
KENNEY: Yeah, I'm sure. We did see, uh ... Toni was there. I know that they... We saw a number of dogs before we settled on this one.
MOORE: The dog casting process. Did they all look the same? Were there a variety of dogs?
KENNEY: They were different. There were a variety of dogs. I mean, they were all small, but, um ... And I don't remember this dog's actual name. Here we are, back at Maison Elise.
MOORE: Back at the brothel.
KENNEY: And this is our first glimpse of Fergus.
MOORE: I remember we worked a lot on the politics of all this, trying to figure out exactly how this was all working. What did Charlie need? What did Duverney think he needed? What was Jamie's sort of, you know, actual motive? How he was going to undermine the Jacobite cause by putting these two together. So it's all these different layers and it was wildly confusing. It took forever to try to make sense of it. Again, because in the book this whole section is told from Claire's point of view. And so Jamie would come back from these meetings, and tell her basically certain things that had happened.
KENNEY: Right.
MOORE: And then Claire would just tell us. And then months went by and this and that happened. So, we didn't really have a strong guide to go by, when we were gonna open the show up and play these actual scenes with Duverney, and Jamie, and the Prince. And we had to construct a lot of the sequences and a lot of the plots, sort of out of whole cloth. And it just became... It was very complicated.
KENNEY: Right, and looking at what actual history had happened and how we'd incorporate that... Yeah. And this was important because now we find out that he's gotten these investors that Jamie doesn't know about.
MOORE: Right.
KENNEY: Which will play as we go forward. Yeah, there was a lot of political-intrigue stuff that we were going on about.
MOORE: And it's one of the reasons why it just went through a lot of working it over and over again, trying to make it clear, to make it understandable. And then it was also... This is one of those cases where you're working on shows later. You're working on Episodes 4 and 5, and things are about to happen in the story with Charlie, and wine, and Jamie and Sandringham and all this other kind of stuff. And then as you fix those problems, you realize, "Well, we haven't set that up properly back in 203." So then you had to go back and rewrite those sections to line up with shows that you were working... It's just...
KENNEY: Yeah, it was a little bit of a brain cramp, a lot of this. And also, enough information so that people can follow, but not overwhelming, because then it... 'Cause a lot of times we had these big speeches and just, "What can we take out of here that we don't need?" 'Cause it just gets boring.
MOORE: 'Cause you have to sort of give the audience a history lesson, without giving them a history lesson.
KENNEY: Yes, yes.
MOORE: It's like they have to kind of get some basic concepts here. Who's on what side? Oh, the British and the French, we know they don't like each other, so how does this work? And who are the Jacobites and why would the French support them, and under what circumstances? And, oh, they're fighting somewhere else in Europe. But not full-on war, 'cause they're still talking to each other. So it was very, very dicey stuff. And to make it a scene. You're trying to make it a scene, not just explain the politics of the era.
KENNEY: Yeah. Yeah, and the whole idea that Prince Charles is in France, but he can't be acknowledged by the King directly because that was a big political faux pas, because he wasn't really supposed to be... Oh, man, it was... Yeah, there was a lot of stuff. And a lot of times, again, thank God for good actors, because they seem to understand what they're talking about.
MOORE: Yeah, they seem to believe it.
KENNEY: Yeah, and you... Even if you can't quite follow it, you can follow their reactions. So, when Charles says something and Jamie, like, looks shocked, you go, "Oh, okay, that's shocking information, even if I didn't quite understand it." Yeah. I mean, hopefully people understood it, but...
MOORE: I believe this exterior, if I'm not mistaken, of Madame Elise's, is actually in Scotland. It's one of the few exteriors that we used in Scotland for Paris. Now, this whole section of Jamie coming home. Claire's not there, and then him later being annoyed, we had to rework this a bit. In the first cut, you followed Claire into the hospital and came home with Claire, to discover Jamie that was really annoyed and unpleasant to her because of what she had been doing. And you kind of felt like Jamie was a jerk. Like you really had no sympathy for him. And you didn't understand why he was acting the way he was. So then we... As we watched it, then we said, All right, let's go back. Let's now shoot this sequence here of watching Jamie wait. Hours going by and getting more and more frustrated 'cause he has something he has to talk with Claire about. Let's be emotionally with Jamie, so that by the time Claire comes home, we, the audience, have also had to wait and wait and wait. We know he's upset and we know he's stressed out about something, so that when he does unload on her, we at least understand and we have more sympathy for him. I mean, 'cause this was a difficult area of the book to translate, this whole fight between him and her about her working in the hospital.
KENNEY: Right, and we... In the book, it's more... "18th-century man, 20th-century woman" a little bit. And I think because we're more in Jamie's head in our story, we wanted to also discuss how he's feeling about all this. How he's feeling about what he's doing and how this is happening. So that's... Yeah, we were putting all that in here. This is also another place where we had to drop in this piece of information that Mother Hildegarde is a musical prodigy.
MOORE: Oh, right. Yeah.
KENNEY: 'Cause we needed that piece of information. And in the book, she spends time with her. She goes and sees her play the piano. We couldn't do that.
MOORE: I love her look there. Just that little look she gives him, like, "Oh, come on."
MOORE: Yeah, there it is, "A musical prodigy."
KENNEY: And the niece or something of the Sun King, 'cause we had to have that relationship also.
MOORE: Oh, right.
KENNEY: This is one of the things I love about the character of Claire, too, is that, "Yeah, well, she saw me taste the urine and I got to lance a boil." And she's so, you know... Yeah, she's not grossed out by any of it. She loves this.
MOORE: She's so enthusiastic about it all.
KENNEY: Yeah, yeah.
MOORE: This was all tricky stuff, trying to figure out this part of the relationship between the two of them, to have a legitimate fight, to have an emotional arc, to say... To understand how these two could come apart at this point, come back together later in subsequent episodes and how that was all gonna play together, it was very difficult, I found. It was very hard to work it through. I remember we had a lot of internal discussions. I remember we had extending conversations with the actors about how this was gonna work, 'cause they had concerns about, "Okay, the fight, and what is it really about?" And where they end up as people and how do they move forward with the plot. It was just one of those things that we just had to work over and over and over again.
KENNEY: Well, and one of the virtues and challenges of all these stories, after the first book, is they're together now. They're a couple, so there is conflict between them, but you can't always... "Well, I'm walking out," or, "I'm not gonna be here." Because that's false. It's like you don't believe it and one of the beauties of the books is these two are a team. And yet, you need some conflict dramatically, otherwise it gets a little boring.
MOORE: 'Cause there's nothing to play.
KENNEY: So it's interesting. And I think we talked a lot in the room - 'cause most of us are married - about, "Well, if I did this or if my husband or my wife..."
MOORE: Yeah, I know there's a lot of that.
KENNEY: Yeah, which is... It's helpful, though, because I think most of us are in committed relationships, so it's like, "How does that work, that you're your own person and you have your feelings, but you're not gonna blow it up?" Do you know what I mean?
MOORE: Yep.
MOORE: It was also important to give Claire this realization that... What her life really would be in 18th-century Paris.
KENNEY: Yeah.
MOORE: What was the role of a woman, of a wife in this place and time? And how does Claire get herself into that place, even though she's doing it for a mission, even though she's doing it for this enormous greater good that they're trying to accomplish. How does she reconcile that with who she is as a person?
KENNEY: Mmm-hmm.
MOORE: 'Cause I've always said that, if Claire had not gone through the stones, if she had never had this experience, I think she was gonna be pretty unhappy back in the 20th century, as women were sort of then expected to return to a very domestic life, and go back to being housewives and get out of the workforce. And Claire had this extraordinary experience in World War 2, and she wasn't gonna do that so easily.
KENNEY: Yeah, yeah. I think that's something that's always interesting to me too, when we talk in the room, 'cause we have to remind ourselves when we say, "Well, she's in the 20th century." It's like, "Yeah, but she was from the '40s."
MOORE: She's from the '40s.
KENNEY: She's not from 2015, and even as the books go forward, even in the '60s, it's better, certainly. And, in fact, I would almost argue that the gap between the '40s and the '60s is almost bigger than the gap between the 18th century and the '40s. Do you know what I mean?
MOORE: Interesting, really?
KENNEY: In terms of, well, women's roles, what you were expected and not expected to do. Yeah.
MOORE: That's an interesting way to look at it, yeah.
KENNEY: So, again, we have to remind ourselves that she was... And she was kind of bucking the system, as you say, even in the '40s.
MOORE: A lot of conversation about when they were having sex, and when they were not having sex in Paris, and trying to weave that into the story, but not make it the dominant theme of the story. We didn't want the show to be all about when they're gonna have sex again.
KENNEY: Yes.
MOORE: This is an odd little avant-garde piece. I came up with this little notion of... We liked this idea that at Madame Elise's, they had this little stage and Gary built us a little stage that they would do performances and odd little performance art-type pieces for this crowd, this very sophisticated crowd in Paris. And we were looking for something to play here, and I just had this idea about painting a woman. Painting the front of a woman on her back and the back of a woman on her front. I didn't know what that meant or why I liked it, but it just... And then you say that to a production team and they all look at you like, "So you want us to do what? How's that gonna work? Like, paint her front on her back... What?"
KENNEY: And I'm sure there were many discussions about, "What does that say about Ron's fantasy life?"
MOORE: Yeah, what does that say about Ron?
KENNEY: "Do we really wanna know?" We introduced Fergus - and there you go.
MOORE: There you go.
KENNEY: In a very different way than he is introduced in the book. Because in the book, Jamie's being followed by guys from the dock. I mean, we just had to simplify things.
MOORE: Right, I forgot about that.
KENNEY: And they go after him, and remember there's the whole thing where he has the big sausage...
MOORE: Sausage fight, yeah.
KENNEY: And then Fergus helps him get away from those guys. Fergus is still a child of the whorehouse.
MOORE: Of the whorehouse, right.
KENNEY: But yeah, he helps him get away from those guys. And, again, sometimes we just had to simplify things, 'cause we just can't get it all in. So we went at it this way.
MOORE: Yeah, just get to it. He's a thief. Jamie figures it out and he wants to hire him.
KENNEY: Right. Now, where was this chase?
MOORE: I think this is in Scotland. I believe this is... I think this is near Sandringham's house, as I recall. The Sandringham's house from Season 1. Yeah, this is a back-alley section that they were able to cobble together. So you can't really tell that it's Paris or Scotland. It just feels generically 18th-century.
KENNEY: And we cast our Fergus. He is French, right?
MOORE: Yep, he's French.
KENNEY: We looked at several young men and they had to be able to speak English, as well. The casting process for this season was challenging, as well.
MOORE: Yeah, 'cause you had to go looking in France for actors.
KENNEY: Yeah.
MOORE: And he's a kid, so there's various work requirements for how many hours he can be on the set, so it just becomes wildly complicated.
KENNEY: And it's also... You get into that weird area, too, which will happen, again. People who have read the books know where we're going with Fergus. And I won't say. But there are things that you also... You can do in a book, because it isn't a real-life person that you're having to say, "Oh, this is what happens to you." Or, "We're gonna show this." Again, I've been on other shows, too, where some child witnesses a horrific murder, and when you're shooting it, you've got a child there, so you're often shooting it in such a way that you shoot the kids' reactions and tell them something really scary is going on. Take them out of the scene and then you shoot it, so that you're not traumatizing some child. So, yeah, it's interesting when you work with kids. And there's Sawney!
MOORE: And there's Sawney. Sawney's okay. Sawney's gonna be like R2-D2. He's gonna go through the entire series, as one of the only witnesses.
KENNEY: We do laugh that we... Jamie has so much stuff in his sporran and it's like Mary Poppins' bag.
MOORE: It is like Mary Poppins' bag.
KENNEY: He just keeps pulling things out of there. I want a bed like that.
MOORE: I know.
KENNEY: Looks very cozy.
MOORE: Fabulous. And, again, the bedroom and the dining room are the same set, they just get redressed. So she left one... She left the room, and walked back into the same room, basically on a different day.
KENNEY: Yeah, it's so... The magic of movies.
MOORE: Yeah.
KENNEY: Oh, I know what I'm curious about. When we do scenes like this, all the candlelight, how much other light is in this room?
MOORE: There is other light. There are lights in the ceiling that you can't see, and then there's some lights from off camera that are enhancing the candlelight. The candles, actually surprisingly provide more illumination than you would think, so when you light that many candles in this room, it does actually light it up. But the DP does enhance and augment it, so that there's a sense of shadow and getting light on the actors' faces and so on. So, it's not quite the full kit that you would have if it was a modern show where you're replicating fluorescents and lamps and so on. So everything's a little bit softer and has to have a certain flicker, a kind of soft feel to it.
KENNEY: And those are real candles?
MOORE: Those are real candles.
KENNEY: That's fire, that's not fake.
MOORE: Yeah, we had a whole conversation at the show, at the outset, before we started, about candles, and, "Couldn't we get away with artificial candles?" 'Cause they've made some candles now that actually... Some artificial candles that are little bulbs, that are LEDs that do have a flicker in them, that replicate it. But you kind of smoke it out quickly on camera. We actually did a couple of camera tests, even in a background shot like this, this angle where you see the candle in deep background behind Claire against the wall, right there on the sconce. Now, you don't really see any flicker in that and you think that you probably could get away with LEDs on those candles. And you might, but... See there's a little bit of movement, if you look closely. You'll see that it moves back and forth just a little bit. And if the camera were to follow Claire out that door, you would quickly realize that those were fake. So we just ended up... We have literally thousands of candles in our prop warehouse.
KENNEY: And sometimes when we go on location, it's a problem, because the locations won't let us use candles.
MOORE: Yeah, some locations won't let you have any open flame on some of these historic buildings. And that's another problem. This didn't come off quite as well and clear as I was hoping. I kind of told myself, this is one of those things where when we broke it in the room, you were supposed to see the whole thing. He follows the guy. He takes the letter out of the guy's bag. The guy's drinking and then you follow him out and give it to Murtagh. Then through the production process, someone said, "Well, do we have to go into the shop? 'Cause we don't have that location. Can't we just see the messenger go in and Fergus follow him, and then Fergus come out with the letter and we'll just assume he stole it?" And at the time, you go, "Okay, I get it. Yeah, that should work." And then you watch it in the cut and you're like, "Oh, shit, actually..."
KENNEY: Would have been better to see him take it.
MOORE: It would have been better to see him take it.
KENNEY: Well, many think there's another solution then that he had him sit outside, the messenger, and then he could take it. But in the moment, you know, can't say yes to everything. So...
MOORE: Yeah, you try and you're always judging, what do you think is vital? What do you have to have versus what would be nice to have?
KENNEY: Yeah.
MOORE: 'Cause production is constantly coming to you and saying, "Is there a way we can not do this set? Is there a way we can not do this scene? 'Cause we're really over and everyone's tired. And we don't really have this set, and it'll cost all this money. And push you into another day." And so you're constantly riding that line. "Well, I think this is just something that we would like. Yeah, let's cut this part."
KENNEY: Well, and then as you get farther into production, too, everything rolls downhill. It's like, "Well, we don't have time to shoot this scene in this block, so we'll push it to the next." And pretty soon that also happens. Things start to just drop off. In a way, you dread having one push 'cause now you know, "Oh, man, that one could very easily go away."
MOORE: Yeah, cause later, they'll say, "Do we really still have to shoot this scene in this block?"
KENNEY: Yeah. Yeah, all this stuff is the book stuff, with the music and the notes and... Yeah, trying to decipher that and make it play was a bit of a challenge, also.
MOORE: Yeah, 'cause it was a lot more of this, even in the book and more of it even in the first drafts of the script, of all the letters and the correspondence and what they were saying, and then they were hiding what they were saying. And some of the letters were in code and some were not.
KENNEY: And there was a whole scene with Claire, actually, right? Where Jamie and Claire, at one point, were working on it together, and then talking about trusting people and...
MOORE: Yeah, trying to still work this all into their personal story and where they were in the relationship.
KENNEY: Yeah. And, again, this was one of those things that you go, "Oh, yeah, Murtagh's at the hospital. He could know this."
MOORE: Yeah.
KENNEY: Sometimes that happens too, as you're constructing things, and then you look at the stuff on the table and you think, "Oh, wait, that will help us."
MOORE: And I think this whole little thing with Bouton here, is right from the book, right?
KENNEY: Yeah, yeah.
MOORE: This is one of those moments, one of those scenes in the book you know you've gotta have in the show somewhere, 'cause everyone remembers it. "Oh, remember Bouton?" And everyone's like, "You gotta do the Bouton thing." And it was just trying to figure out, "Where do we do the Bouton thing? It's gotta be here someplace." I wasn't there when they were shooting this, but I can imagine that this was like a nightmare, trying to get the dog... 'Cause he's gotta like walk on the guy, he's gotta sniff at a certain place, he's gotta lie down, he's gotta bark. I'm sure this was a nightmare. And now some gross stuff.
BOTH : Ugh.
KENNEY: And some more gross stuff.
MOORE: Yeah, some more gross stuff.
KENNEY: Does Caitriona, is she... I've never known her to be any kind of squeamish about any of this stuff.
MOORE: I don't think she is. I don't think she has any problems with it.
KENNEY: Yeah, even when we have the cooked rabbits and that kind of stuff. Ugh.
MOORE: Well, day one on the whole show was her in that field hospital, World War 2, with open wounds and blood spurting everywhere...
KENNEY: Ugh!
MOORE: And raw... Just really nasty stuff. So I think she got over it really quickly.
KENNEY: Sometimes this stuff is tricky too, because when she's doing something, obviously she can't do this on the guy's legs, with how the makeup works. Whether it's actually on his leg and it's something that she's working on, on top of his skin, or whether it's an actual prosthetic and we're just not seeing the rest of it.
MOORE: Some of it is shot later, like some of those insert shots of the wound itself were definitely done weeks after the fact, and not even Caitriona's hands, somebody else's hands.
KENNEY: Oh, wow. Yeah, I feel like, despite all ... Sometimes when you jimmy-rig with stuff over and over, in the end it doesn't quite hang together. And I think we ultimately... This was good, his arc of being upset with her, and then coming and ...
MOORE: Yeah, making the gesture.
KENNEY: Yeah. And so it's his way of saying, "I'm okay with this." Which was nice.
MOORE: Yeah.
KENNEY: This was one of those things from the book, too, that was fun. This little you know... Again, Diana does these moments of like... Claire knows. "My friend. My German friend, Johann Sebastian Bach. But he'll never be anything." That stuff's fun.
MOORE: It's like she does it so infrequently in the books, when she does do it, you get kind of a thrill out of it, 'cause she doesn't hit the time-travel stuff too hard. This is a complicated and interesting idea of a code that is about the key and how many times switching the key was the key to decrypting the whole thing. It's like a wild idea and I hope it comes across to people who haven't read the book.
MOORE: What's nice about the way Diana does this is that, that's a moment where we feel superior to her, right? We and Claire feel superior 'cause we know something that she doesn't, and she does that so little in the books. There's not that many times where Claire is really looking at these people with superiority. She mostly empathizes with them, and adapts and a lot of times, she's impressed and trying to catch up with what these people are doing. There's not a lot of distance to sort of look down at them from, you know, a future perspective.
KENNEY: Well, I always think that's one of the genius things about having Claire having grown up with an anthropologist and she lives rough, so she... This stuff doesn't throw her. And, yeah, she would have an appreciation of different cultures, and that kind of stuff, which is cool. There's another amazing dress. Oh, my God, I love that blue and orange thing. That's fabulous. Is Terry like a, uh... What would I say, not flamboyant dresser, but does she like to wear costume-y stuff? Whenever I've seen her, she's working, so she's usually in very practical clothes.
MOORE: No, she likes... She's of that sort of "I like to wear black every day 'cause it makes one fewer decision I have to have."
KENNEY: Ah, that's interesting.
MOORE: And a lot of costume designers are like that. And fashion designers, they... Michael Kors does the same thing.
KENNEY: That's true.
MOORE: Just, "I wear basic black every day. 'Cause I don't wanna think about it." And then they project all that out into the world.
KENNEY: Yeah. It's really interesting.
MOORE: She was always dressing the kids up.
KENNEY: Oh, really? She was always... As the kids were growing up, she would make outfits for them and costumes for them. Halloween was like a whole thing at our house.
KENNEY: Halloween must have been spectacular.
MOORE: Oh, Halloween was amazing.
KENNEY: Ah.
MOORE: Just these amazing costumes she would construct for the kids.
KENNEY: Wow. That would be great.
MOORE: And on Battlestar, she talked to Glenne Campbell, who was our costume designer on Battlestar and they made flight suits for the kids. Like, two little flight suits for each of them. And they wore them to Comic-Con one year. And they were tickled. But they were so young, and they also were like, "These are kind of hot."
KENNEY: Also, they grew up with it, so it's like, "Doesn't everybody's mom do this?"
MOORE: They kind of grew up with it. Yeah. "A flight suit? Everyone has a flight suit."
KENNEY: Yeah. Was there any costume other than that that you can think of that she made the kids that stands out?
MOORE: Oh, she made an amazing magician's costume once and a White Queen kind of... A Snow Queen kind of outfit one year. There was an alien costume for him she did once and makeup and the whole thing.
KENNEY: Were you guys the parents who went with the kids and were in costume as well?
MOORE: No, we never did... We never did the costumes ourselves. I was always a little disappointed in that but she was like... Terry had a hard line on Halloween. She was like, "You can't... No adults dress up on Halloween." Like, "Really?" "No, it's a kids' holiday. Only the kids."
KENNEY: That's hilarious. So you didn't get your flight suit?
MOORE: I did not get my flight suit.
KENNEY: You do have a kilt, though.
MOORE: I do have a kilt. I have several kilts, so... Yeah, I think it is nice that this episode does get back to this personal thing at the end. That it does feel like we knitted this all together thematically in a successful way, through all the drama on-screen and off.
KENNEY: Yeah. And this is great too, 'cause, of course, she's standing there, holding this secret, and he's saying, "You're so wonderful, and we're in this together and..."
MOORE: It helps a lot that Murtagh's in the know.
KENNEY: Yeah.
MOORE: It's like the three actors are in such sync, I mean, such good... In the rhythm. And they know where each other is, and they play well off each other.
KENNEY: And it's always, again, you're looking for the end of these episodes to make people lean in, like, "Oh, no, what's gonna happen?"
MOORE: Yeah, "What's gonna happen next?" Well, there you have it, that's 203. Thank you, Anne.
KENNEY: Thank you, Ron.
MOORE: It was a pleasure. And, now, folks, we will talk to you again on Episode 204. Until then, good night and good luck.