Author: Alicia Lutes

April 11, 2015 7:00pm PT by Alicia Lutes

 Starz

Lotte Verbeek and Ron Moore weigh in on Geillis and Dougal’s relationship.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Outlander‘s “By the Pricking of My Thumbs” episode.]

Starz’s Outlander picked up from its eventful midseason return Saturday with another jam-packed hour in which the Duke of Sandringham was introduced and Geillis made a shocking revelation.

Claire (Caitriona Balfe) turned to the Duke of Sandringham (Simon Callow) to try and ensure her husband’s freedom and ability to return to Lallybroch as rightful laird. Geillis Duncan (Lotte Verbeek) revealed she’s pregnant — but not with her husband’s baby after she poisoned him with cyanide. Instead, her baby daddy is the seemingly perma-fertile Dougal (Graham McTavish). With both their significant others out of the way, they’ll finally be able to be together, right? Wrong! It’s a trial they’ve left to suffer through: the accusation of witchcraft finally falling upon both Claire and Geillis’ head.

The Hollywood Reporter caught up with actress Verbeek and Outlander showrunner Ron Moore to break down the big reveal, deviations from the book and why maybe the 1740s was a better experience for Claire.

What was it like to play that reveal where she’s performing the ritual Claire and Frank (Tobias Menzies) had previously seen in the 1940s?

Verbeek: It was very physical and revealing for her: both mentally and physically (laughs). It’s the first time that it wasn’t so much about clues being drawn out like we’ve seen throughout the season; it’s ultimately about Geillis going all out. It’s a very exciting arc Geillis has: you know that there’s a lot of mystery and there’s probably going to be a lot of surprises and now we actually get to see more of her true nature — or at least the dismantling of the facade. It’s a little bit grittier and darker and more intense, whereas the first half felt a little bit more romantic. It’s definitely an exciting time.

What were your thoughts when you found out she was pregnant with Dougal’s baby?

Verbeek: I didn’t read the books ahead of time, but when I read the script it was a surprise. With this kind of character you know she’s got something up her sleeve and that is fun. As much as I love to be surprised by what I read, I also like the surprise of it for the book fans. Because [they] already know what’s going to happen, but still they’re excited to see this just by the way that we’re going to tell the story.

What do you think about the relationship between Dougal and Geillis?

Verbeek: Ultimately it’s romantic because however you want to look at it I believe she truly, really, deeply is in love with Dougal. She really does love him and she sees an equal in him that she hasn’t really known before. We see that her first marriage was really one of safety and convenience, whereas with Dougal, that’s not convenient at all. In fact, it’s not really helpful to be with a guy who is a drunk and who has a temper and shouldn’t really be seen with Geillis. But she truly loves him; she sees the passion they both have. It’s interesting because you never get to see them together on screen — they barely share screen time — so you don’t see the effects of them being together. Well until the big reveal that she’s pregnant. Obviously that wasn’t Immaculate Conception. It’s truly romantic.

Too bad it looks like this trial might get in the way of that happily ever after.

Verbeek: It was wild — I’ve never done anything like it. It was just epic!

Why did Claire go out of her way to meet with the Duke of Sandringham?

Moore: We diverted from the book in that area. In the book version of the events, the Duke arrived and goes off with Jamie (Sam Heughan) on a hunting exhibition, meaning a lot of the action would take place off camera. We wanted to play him a little bit more forward in the show [because] he is set up as this interesting figure that plays both sides against the middle, and you question constantly what side he’s on. So we thought, to deal with Jamie and the price on his head, let’s bring that to the front, and put Claire in his world for a minute. Have her take charge of that because in the second season, the tables are going to get turned in some interesting ways.

You really see how authoritative she is in her own environment. It’s interesting to bring that out in her — she’s in her element when she’s playing with the big boys.

Moore: She has a lot of strength and she’s not apprehensive. The formative experience for this character was when she was an Army field nurse during World War II and right off the bat that tells me a lot about who she is, and what she able to deal with. I don’t think she’s naïve: I think she’s seen power, and what men are capable of, and what she is capable of — and she’s not afraid to use strength when she has to because she dealt with life and death. She saw a horrific war, person to person, and I think that changes people. She couldn’t be the shy, retiring English Rose anymore. She’s somebody else.

It’s interesting to see her truest self come to fruition — 200 years in the past.

Moore: We all talked about that in the writers’ room. If she had not gone through the stones, what would have happened to Claire in the 21st century? She would have been pretty unhappy. Because the post-war world would have forced her into another role: they tried very much in the world after the second World War to return it to just the way it used to be. They told women, “No more working in factories, it’s time to go home and you’re going to be homemakers again.” And a lot of women had trouble with that transition and I think Claire wouldn’t have really enjoyed that.

She has too much life in her for that.

Moore: I don’t think she would have known that about herself in the beginning, because when the pilot starts in, going home and doing that is what she’s planning on — I think that’s what they were all planning on doing. And I think it would have taken her awhile to realize, “Something’s not right here; this is not good; what’s wrong with me?”

What did you think of Outlander‘s big reveal? Sound off in the comments section, below. Outlander airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on Starz. 

April 04, 2015 2 hours ago by Alicia Lutes

 Starz

“The second part of the season really digs into the relationships and the tests and challenges they face,” he tells THR.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers ahead from Saturday’s Outlander episode, “The Reckoning.”]

Saturday’s return of Starz’s Diana Gabaldon epic Outlander featured a shift in its point-of-view — both literally and figuratively. The sweeping romance of Claire (Caitrona Balfe)’s narration and overall point of view in episodes like “The Wedding” has been replaced with the voice of her husband, Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), in an action-heavy return for a series that has, up until this point, been far more romantic in tone.

With that shift comes Saturday’s midseason premiere, “The Reckoning,” both literally (it’s the title) and figuratively speaking. The gallant Scot is forced to encroach on enemy territory — Black Jack Randall’s (Tobias Menzies) lair — after we last saw Claire trying to reach for the stones that sent her back in time in the first place. Only … it didn’t exactly go as planned, sending her 1740s-era husband on quite the dangerous and involved quest order to save his wife from certain brutality.

Only, in an interesting twist, to result in their facing a marital brutality all their own: an epic fight and the subsequent punishment of the belt-on-skin variety. It’s a moment of abuse not previously seen in the otherwise largely romantic and idealized relationship. And it sets Claire, determined as ever, on a path toward asserting equal footing and respect in her relationship with Jamie. It’s a battle that doesn’t take sides in its storytelling, but certainly has its considered reasons as each character is concerned.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Heughan spoke about taking charge of the narrative, Jamie and Claire’s biggest problem and the darkness that awaits viewers in the second half of season one.

It’s nice to finally see the inner workings of Jamie and Claire’s unconventional relationship from Jamie’s point of view.

The first half of the season is all from Claire’s POV, and therefore we sometimes forget that this is only what she’s thinking or seeing. This is the first time we start to see that there’s another side, and so we see everything that Jamie goes through to get to the point that he ends up at the window, which is a cliffhanger from the first half. The fallout from that is the argument and the fact is he has to punish her and we had to understand why exactly he does that and what danger she put them through. It will certainly get people talking.

That’s what gives the show its dynamic, because as complicated as Jamie and Claire’s relationship is, it’s also incredibly — and sometimes shockingly — honest.

That’s right. He’s a very straightforward kind of guy and in that way he’s very lucky. He almost instantly fell for her in the first part of the season, but it’s a very complicated issue because she has this past and they’re from different time periods and therefore they never really see eye to eye — there’s always that barrier between them. We’re starting to learn that he may not be as clean cut or perfect as he may appear in the first part of the season. We start to realize he has his past as well, and some failings: he’s stubborn and he’s proud and he has relationships that he hasn’t dealt with in the past, so we get to see a lot more of the other side of him and his character.

What did you think of doing an entire episode narrated in Jamie’s voice?

It really marks the beginning of the second half of season one, and the change that’s coming. We discover a lot more about Jamie’s past and [the series] really begins to show the background of these characters. The second part of the season really digs into the relationships and the tests and challenges they face.

He’s always been shown as someone who’s so moral and proud — do you think his morality gets in his own way? It seemed to in this episode, when he insisted on giving Claire that bum-lashing.

[Laughs] Absolutely it gets him into trouble. Especially his pride and that’s one of the enduring things about him, when he puts his mind to something that’s the way it is and he can be quite stubborn about it, but in that way so is Claire and that’s the constant source of conflict for them. Since they’re both very stubborn and headstrong, ultimately what happens is they fall out and have to work really hard to come to some sort of agreement. I think that’s the mark of a healthy relationship and actually it feels like a very modern one in that way.

Do you think that Claire’s modernity is rubbing off on him? The diplomacy and forward-thinking he displays when he resolves the Colum and Dougal stand-off felt different from the Jamie we’ve seen prior.

I think so, yeah. I think he’s really growing up. Every relationship that you’re in always teaches you about yourself and how you react to other people and certainly in the Colum/Dougal relationship, you see it lead him to better understand his relationship with Claire and what he needs to do in order to find a resolve. We see a man who basically grows up — or at least he goes from being a man with no responsibilities to being the one to make the choices about who he wants to be: does he want this relationship and where it is going in the future? It’s a journey that every person goes through at some point in his or her life.  [Sometimes] you have to really make some choices

That touches on this idea that the show works with so often: using sex and power subversively to angle and give depth to its characters. What is it like being an actor in those final moments of the episode when Claire has Jamie by the throat and balls?

I think it feels strong. If it wasn’t there the show would be completely different and maybe something else. It’s really important and unsettling as an actor — we’re constantly having to ask to reassess who we are and who our characters are — and it’s amazing. I don’t want to give too much away for the end of the season but, it’s calls into question a lot of the things we think we know about the characters and I think it’s going to constantly surprise people and I think that’s an important thing in a show, so the audience doesn’t get complacent.

Outlander airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on Starz. What did you think of the episode? 

Courtesy of Netflix

Many television series have tried to mimic the Internet’s wide array of camp comedy tunes, but few have managed the universal adoration of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt standout “Peeno Noir.” The ridiculously silly and infinitely catchy tune — as performed by Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess) — has become nearly ubiquitous, with T-shirts, parody tunes and the belting of “peeeeenoooo nooooiiir!” popping up almost immediately after the show’s Netflix debut.

Composer/executive producer Jeff Richmond spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the song’s origins, its initial reception from cast and crew and its surprising connection to the 30 Rock universe.

“Peeno Noir” has had such a life of its own since Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt premiered.

I was very surprised and delighted that “Peeno Noir” is its own little sensation. … I don’t think anyone knew what “Peeno Noir” was going to sound like while we were shooting it, and everybody thought it was just crazy. Like, “What is this going to add up to be?” You could just feel it. People were like, “Is this going to be anything? What’s going to happen?”

We were putting it together in the same, amateurish way that Titus, the character, was putting it together on the show. In his mind he thought, “All I need is my ringtone and some rhyming words and I can make a music video.” And I think because of the production schedule, we went into it the same way.

The day we were set to shoot it, we were already behind schedule … so we headed down there quickly, with the beat [playing] quietly on the set, the writers yelling out rhymes that they’d come up with. And Tituss would do it in front of different settings or in the fancy townhouse we’d rented that day. Just whatever we could do to get Tituss on camera singing and rhyming. Once we got all these crazy elements, we basically built the song from there. We laid all the pieces in. We were able to bring Tituss back in and say, “We’re going to add a little backup part to this, we’re going to pull the elements from this piece of the song and this piece and we’ll tie it all together” and in turn tie the whole episode together.

Read more ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ TV Review

Where did the song itself come from?

We had a beat, which we took from an old 30 Rock episode that we used as a ringtone. It was definitely not like how you would go about doing a song musically at all.

Wait — there’s another 30 Rock connection to Kimmy Schmidt?

The actual track we grabbed at the last minute to shoot to was the track from an episode of 30 Rock where Denise Richards sang a very short musical video called “La Piscine” [from “Idiots Are People Two!” season six, episode two] about how much she loved the pool.

We needed something; we were shooting in 10 minutes, so Giancarlo [Vulcano, Richmond’s music associate] said, “What about ‘La Piscine’?” and we said, “OK, perfect.” So we basically, in some weird way, have connected 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt in the same universe, where Denise singing ‘La Piscine’ was actually Tituss’ ringtone. On some weird level, that’s what occurred there. Now the writers and Tina [Fey] and Robert [Carlock, the show’s co-creators] will never, ever admit to that because it’s my secret, but that’s what happened.

How much do you love “Peeno Noir”? Sound off in the comments.