Caitriona Balfe as Claire Fraser and Duncan Lacroix as Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser (Sony Pictures Television/Starz)
Murtagh hit the road with Claire Fraser in an attempt to find Jamie in Starz’s “Outlander” on Saturday night.
The characters, played by Duncan Lacroix and Caitriona Balfe, traveled across the Scottish countryside in “The Search” episode, using the only 18th century method of communication available to get a message to an outlaw – fame. To try and let Jamie know where to find them, they became a traveling performance troupe — a singing Sassenach and a Highland dancing Fraser.
“He’s just like a frustrated showman,” Duncan told Access Hollywood of Murtagh’s stage moves. “He’s really bad at it, but won’t admit to himself that he’s terrible.”
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While Duncan learned how to do some Highland dancing, he actually learned a little too much.
“I was actually getting quite good at it, but then, when the script arrived, he’s actually quite terrible, so I suppose you have to learn something to be bad at it,” Duncan laughed.
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Much of the episode followed Murtagh and Claire on their tour, performing and then squaring off with the gypsies who borrowed their routine. Duncan said he had fun working with Caitriona on “The Search.”
“She’s so funny behind the scenes as well. It was lots of laughs and it’s just an odd dynamic between those two characters, really,” he said. “They make such an unlikely duo, but it kind of works… and… you get to see a lot of what makes Murtagh tick all of a sudden. He suddenly kind of blossoms as a character in that episode, so it was great to explore.”
As the two characters did their best to locate Jamie (or have Jamie locate them), Murtagh’s respect for Claire grew.
“Oh, big time. I mean, he essentially comes up with quite a ridiculous plan for the pair of them. … They’re almost like a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby on the road, but they’re searching for Jamie all over Scotland and it kind of gets hopeless towards the end, and then they get frustrated with each other, they argue with each other, but she really shows like an indomitable will and kind of takes almost over as the kind of leader of that dynamic and he immediately respects [that],” Duncan said. “There’s a scene… where it’s a kind of make or break moment between the pair of them and yeah, he totally respects her from that moment on.”
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And we assume that moment is the one where, at their lowest, with no sign of Jamie, and penniless after paying off the gypsies (who didn’t keep their word), the two argued and Claire accused Murtagh of never having lost someone he loved. He then revealed his own backstory – he once fought for the hand of Ellen Fraser (Jamie’s mom) – and lost.
Access asked Duncan if he kept the backstory of Murtagh and Ellen in his mind while playing his character.
“Not so much the specifics of that, it’s more the fact that he’s the kind of guy that’s almost an idealist romantic,” Duncan said. “He stayed in love with the idea of someone throughout his entire life, and I think that’s very revealing about his character — that he’s very kind of black and white and very romantic and has a very strong moral compass and won’t let things go. He’s very tenacious, and yeah, it’s a huge aspect to the character — the idea that you would just stay loyal to the memory of someone, even though… he wasn’t even with her in the first place.”
“Outlander” continues next Saturday night at 9 PM ET/PT on Starz.
— Jolie Lash
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