Outlander favourite Sam Heughan cast as Macbeth in Royal Shakespeare Company debut
Swapping Scotland for, err, Scotland.
Sam Heughan is set for a trip even further back in time than usual to a very different Scotland as the Outlander star prepares to take to the stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Best known for his role as Jamie Fraser in the hit historical drama, Heughan is taking a break from TV after filming wrapped on Outlander season 8 for his first stint in theatre in 12 years.
But while he'll be briefly leaving the screen, he's staying firmly in Scotland as he takes on the lead role of Macbeth in Shakespeare's legendary Scottish tragedy, as he revealed in an interview with Deadline.
"I was looking for something that would really excite me," he explained. "I've been doing Outlander for 11 years, and obviously it was brilliant, but I wanted something else."
He added: "I went to the RSC to see Edward II there, and I just felt that buzz. I sat in the auditorium and I felt that excitement, sort of the churn in my stomach as the lights went down, and I was like, 'Yeah, this is the drug I'm looking for.' And it's terrifying. And I think that's a good thing to be scared again."
Heughan, who is now sporting a buzz cut for his new role, will perform opposite Lia Williams (The Crown, The Day of the Jackal) as Lady Macbeth.
Although his last stint on stage was in the somewhat less high-brow Batman Live, something Heughan concedes is "not quite Shakespeare", Heughan is a classically trained actor, having trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
"I did classical theatre training, and I built my career on theatre," he noted. "That's what I did way before I got any sort of TV jobs."
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He added that, for him, playing Macbeth was something of a full-circle moment, referencing his first ever show in youth theatre in which he played an extra in a production of Macbeth at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum theatre, and that it's "a dream" to play the lead role this time around.
"It's a play that's super exciting. It's one of his shortest. It's bloody. It's got some incredible writing and some really fascinating character at the centre of it."
The RSC's upcoming production of Macbeth will run from 9th October to 6th December at The Other Place theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
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