Outlander's Ronald D. Moore and Tobias Menzies Deconstruct That Painful Flogging Scene (VIDEO)
Outlander reached one of many pivotal moments from the first novel in Saturday's "The Garrison Commander"—but even if you knew what was coming, the episode was still hard to watch.
The hour began with Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Dougal (Graham McTavish) coming face-to-face with the Red Coats, and our leading lady assuring them that she had been staying with the MacKenzie clan willingly. But Claire still had to convince someone else of her motives: Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies), the same man who'd almost raped her when she first fell through the Standing Stones at Craigh na Dun.
Claire—whose sudden memory of her husband provided the stark contrast between Frank and Jack—eventually sat across the table from the Captain and asked that she be allowed to resume her journey in peace. It was then that Clare brought up Jack's "reputation" at Castle Leoch, including the rumor that he'd once "administered 100 lashes upon 100 lashes to a poor Highlander boy." Randall explained his side of the story, while flashbacks depicted Jamie (Sam Heughan) taking his punishment for theft without making any sound—something the vicious Captain could not stand for. What followed was a cringeworthy, painful, and bloody sequence, perfectly and hauntingly portrayed by Menzies—that illustrated just how deep Jack's sadism runs.
Ironically, however, Outlander executive producer Ronald D. Moore viewed the flogging flashback as a way to humanize and contextualize the character.
"Episode 6 was an interesting opportunity to look at that particular backstory through [Jack's] eyes," he says in the video below, which we filmed during a recent set visit. "We made a choice not to show the flogging of Jamie from Jamie's perspective [but] from Jack's perspective, which I thought was fascinating. You know Jamie's take—it sucked. From Jack, I want to hear what [he] thought when he was doing this horrific thing to this young lad. So it provided us a way to get inside his character."
On finding the humanity in a character so evil, Moore continues, "All great villains are human, [and] like we all do, they have loves and fears and desires, but are acting a different way driven by different passions or different torments or different flaws. So I always just talk about Jack as a guy and here's his particular dilemma and his particular set of problems. We never talk about him as the villain of the piece."
As for Menzies, the actor says it's important that he not be "campy" in his "evilness," but adds, "[The scenes] are tough to film in that you need to go there a bit, but there's also a certain amount of relish about it. You say and do things you couldn't do in real life." He also warns, "If the stuff in Episode 6 is tough, [the end of the season] is a whole other level up."
As for how the show will tackle those tough scenes, Moore makes it clear that they're not setting out to sensationalize the gore.
"How we approach it philosophically on the show is that we're always saying, 'What's the truth of this scene? Some horrific things are about to happen, let's portray them truthfully. Let's try to make something painful look painful, something that's psychologically damaging look damaging and let's not celebrate it,'" Moore says. "It's not the style of the show [to have] slow-mo spurts of blood, it's not about the celebration of the violence or the fetishistic aspect like, 'Ooh, this will be dirty and nasty.' You demystify it a bit. You don't tiptoe around it and you don't overly glamorize it either—you find what's real within it."
