
Photo: Starz
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Part two of season seven of Outlander has kicked off, and Claire secret off being a time traveler has been revealed, however, now she is being asked to help heal Ian, who is very ill.
I talked to stars Sam Heughan and Caitríona Balfe, who play Jamie and Claire, about what they would do as time travelers and if they thinks there is unfair pressure on Claire as a time traveler. Check out our interview below.
If you guys were time travelers, would you want to visit your descendants or ancestors, and why?
Sam Heughan: I think I would like to. I don’t know if I want to meet them or just see them, I’m not sure. I think I would, yeah I think I would because I know very little about some of my descendants, but I would love to ask some questions and see how similar they are to me. And that’s kind of what’s scary, right? To realize “oh my God. I’m just a product of genetics.”
Caitríona Balfe: It’s funny, my uncle did a whole family tree and we have some photographs, especially on my dad’s side. But you know, it was Ireland and everybody was poor and everyone lived in these little kind of crofts with thatched roofs, so I would love to go visit. I don’t think I would like to hang out for too long. That looks that looked like a tough life.
Sam: No, just a visit. We could do like a day.
Caitríona: Yeah a day. Absolutely. Get everybody together. Have a nice big pow wow. You know, that’ be great.
Sam: Then we can come back to air conditioning.
Caitríona: And soap and heating.
With great power there’s great responsibility, but do you think there’s kind of a undue burden on Claire that like “oh well you’re from the future can’t you cure every disease? Why don’t you have every medicine available to cure all these things?” Do you think there’s a bit too much pressure and too many expectations put on Claire because she can time travel and people know now?
Sam: (Jokingly) I don’t think she does enough. I mean, seriously. And my daughter [Brianna] that’s another. She could have done a lot more.
Caitríona: Well, it’s funny. It is that thing of, how much do you know? I mean she comes back with these amazing skills but it’s like, even a doctor of today’s time, they constantly have books that they reference or they have the internet. They’re still looking things up. They don’t have a completely encyclopedic memory of every single thing. But I will say, I think it’s burden on her. I think she really does feel like she should be able to do more. And also I think the frustrations of when it’s not involving medicine obviously there’s the frustrations there of “if I had this instrument” or “if I had this medicine I could do more.” But it’s also “if I had this knowledge.” I think she wishes she knew more about the history and more details and I think that’s always like quite a fun thing that we play with in the show of she kind of knows there’s this battle but she’s not sure what happens and you’re like “God Claire, you need to listen to a little bit more.”
Sam: I mean her knowledge of history is pretty impressive.
Caitríona: For someone who’s not a historian.
Sam: Yeah, I mean it’s pretty good.
Outlander airs on Fridays on Starz.
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