Outlander: Blood of My Blood's Jeremy Irvine was initially sceptical about character romance
"No one's going to believe this."
Outlander: Blood of My Blood star Jeremy Irvine has revealed that he wasn't originally convinced by how Julia and Henry fall in love in the prequel series, which explores the lives and love stories of Claire and Jamie Fraser's parents.
At a special Radio Times fan event in London marking the show’s launch, he recalled how the two characters meet – Henry is a soldier in the First World War, while Julia works in the redaction office, where one of his letters ends up on her desk.
"I think Henry's sort of given up on life, really," said Irvine. "I think he's lost all hope and his last throwing out of a lifeline, really, is this open letter which, through the magic that happens in the Outlander universe, happens to land on his soulmate's desk and they fall in love through words."
Irvine then recalled the scene where they come face to face for the first time and they "just know, I just know that it's her".
"I remember calling [executive producer] Matt [Roberts] up going, 'No one's going to believe this. No one's going to believe it,'" he said. "And Matt went, 'No, I want there to be this magic about this world.'
"And it was only when I saw it, I went, 'Oh my God, yeah, you're completely right.'"
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"It is heightened, but it's so lovely in the very cynical world that we live in now, to have this complete lack of cynicism and just lose yourself in that," added Irvine. "It's difficult to imagine these days, but I think the poetics of the letter writing of that time also allows that.
"They fall in love before they even meet, and I think there's something really beautiful in that."
That "magic" is also present during Ellen and Brian's first encounter, which Harriet Slater described as "love at first sight".
"Not everyone might believe in that, but it was written in the script as a 'thunderclap moment', when two souls that are destined to be together finally meet, and so there is an element of fantasy about it," said Slater.
"These two characters just know, after seeing each other for a split second, that there's something there," added Jamie Roy.
"There's this magnetism that draws them together that they've never felt before. There's just something really, really special there. And hopefully we showed that."
Outlander: Blood of My Blood will premiere on Saturday 9th August in the UK on MGM+ in the UK. You can buy Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books on Amazon.
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Authors
Abby Robinson is the Drama Editor for Radio Times, covering TV drama and comedy titles. She previously worked at Digital Spy as a TV writer, and as a content writer at Mumsnet. She possesses a postgraduate diploma and a degree in English Studies.
