Sam Heughan slams makers of 'Outlander' for filming 'unnecessary' nude shot during rape scene
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Sam Heughan has slammed his 'Outlander' team heads for filming an "unnecessary" shot of his genitals during a horrific rape scene. The Scottish actor feels he was "betrayed" when the creative heads decided to take a shot of his penis after his character suffered a harrowing rape. However, the scene was dropped and didn’t make the final cut, Heughan's trust was compromised that day.
The 'Men in Kilts' star made the revelation in his memoir, 'Waypoints: My Scottish Journey', where he penned his experience of filming the final episodes of season one of the series in which his character, 18th-century Highland warrior Jamie Fraser, was tormented and repeatedly raped by his nemesis Captain Jonathan ‘Black Jack’ Randall, played by 'Game of Thrones' actor Tobias Menzies.
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Heughan had agreed to nudity in his contract but during this very shoot he had expressed his different take with the team, “This wasn't a moment where I felt that being naked would add to the horror of what Jamie undergoes in that castle dungeon as a form of punishment, subjugation, and humiliation.” He added, “I pushed back, reasoning that nudity sexualised a horrific experience for my character, and it sparked quite a debate. Creative conversations are a feature of all productions, good art is made by questioning the truth and we all want to get it right.”
In the end the team had agreed to take off that particular shot from going on air. “Those closing scenes were incredibility challenging to film,” suggested Heughan. “Even though, thankfully the nude shots ended on the cutting room floor. It was a harrowing, exhausting experience,” he added. Although that scene was not included, Heughan admitted that the debate on whether to have the scene or not "betrayed his trust" in the show's makers. He further added that he does not think such scenes would ever be filmed in the present day, reported Daily Mail.
The 42-year-old actor wrote on the shoot, “Times have changed. The c**k shot was unnecessary and did betray my trust in the creative team a bit. We don't need to see the horror to imagine what the characters go through. Imagination is way more powerful.”
“They said, 'We’d love one more wide shot of it, the whole thing,"' Heughan recalled in a 2015 interview with Vulture. He continued, "And I was like... [groans], 'Oh God'. I thought I'd gotten it all out of the way. And they said, 'We'll only do it up to a certain point, just before it happens.'"
However, Heughan claims the director and production team never said "cut," which meant he had to act through the entire scene. “It got up to that point, and they didn’t call cut, so we had to carry on. I remember feeling so scared, and actually feeling slightly like my trust had been broken a bit, because it was horrific. Great to play, but horrific. But that’s what it was for [my character] Jamie — he’s beaten and tortured and broken down, completely!” he recalled.
As per the report, Heughan has been part of all six seasons of 'Outlander' and was recently seen filming season seven, following the seventh of eight book series in the 'Outlander' novel, called 'An Echo in the Bone'. It is a time-bending series amid World War II, a nurse named Claire goes back in time to Scotland in 1743, where she meets Heughan's character, Jamie.