In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Outlander star Sophie Skelton discusses audition for the show and trying to live up to fans’ expectations for Brianna.
Living up to Brianna on the page:
It’s almost like the pressure of playing a real person. A lot of these women have been reading about Brianna for 20 years. I was three at the time Brianna comes into the second book. That’s always the scary thing about it… You owe it to [viewers] to play her how they imagined, but obviously with the book everyone sees everything differently. Luckily, when I was prepping for the role, I read the books and became a fan of Brianna as well, so anything [fans] feel they want to keep of her, I probably feel, too. I feel very protective of the character. Also, we changed her a lot from the book to the series. You kind of have to ignore the precious side of it, and even though you want to reference the book, you have to be true to each scene and the character that’s been written on the page.
Auditioning for Outlander:
I had auditioned for Brianna in 2014, before the show was actually out. So I read the books and I met Caitriona for the first time at one of my screen tests. Then I didn’t hear anything for a year. I thought I hadn’t gotten the role. And then the audition came through again and I was like, “I swear I’ve auditioned for this!” I was kind of gutted, because sometimes you get a character that comes along that you feel really protective of and I really felt like that about Bree. When the audition came around again, I watched the entire series so I could get a lot of Caitriona’s mannerisms in. I wanted to get a lot of Sam’s mannerisms in, too, because Brianna is going to be very much like Jamie. But I wanted to make sure that his mannerisms were genetic things that you could do without ever having seen the person. With Caitriona, I wanted to copy little traits that she did. She folds her arms, she does this little lick of the mouth—she does things you can pick up from somebody by being around them every day, as opposed to it just being in your genes.
Watch Skelton work her way through Brianna’s family tree and read the interview in its entirety here.
Source: Harper’s Bazaar
