I was going through interviews that I had bookmarked from around the time season five of Outlander premiered. I (obviously) did not get the time to write up all of them, and this interview with The Sydney Morning Herald stands out, even with it being from February. Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe were interviewed for this newspaper about the fans, season five, and the future of Outlander. Excerpts are below, but head over to The Sydney Morning Herald to read the entire article.
A fifth season of Outlander has premiered, and a sixth has been confirmed, which will air in 2021. Significantly, in the new season, the series departs from the novels by adding a major storyline that is not part of Gabaldon’s printed narrative.
The new season also marks a shift in the creative input Heughan and Balfe have in the series; both are now credited as co-producers on the series. “It’s important to have a say,” Balfe says. “We’ve built these characters from day one, and I think we feel, especially when so many of our core writers are not on the show any more and we’ve got new writers coming in, it’s [important] to retain that through-line.”
“With our show, the unique thing is the books, so as we go along we are still continuing to do pretty much one book per season,” she says. “I think we’re taking in a little bit of book six into season five but we knew with seasons five and six that we were going to incorporate books five and six together and sort of move the timelines around a little.
“But in terms of where we go to in the end, I think we feel it’s a little early for those conversations, I hope anyway,” she adds. “I think we’re all [under] the impression that, fingers crossed, we’ll get another one after six and maybe we’ll start having those conversations then.”
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
