One young man’s determination to help out an English woman in the Highlands paved the path for Claire’s face-to-face reunion with her husband’s villainous ancestor, Black Jack Randall, on Starz’s “Outlander.”
In “The Garrison Commander,” which aired on Saturday night, Tobias Menzies strapped on his leather boots and Dragoons Captain’s coat and dug deep to play Jonathan Wolverton Randall, a deeply scarred character who straddled shades of gray and black.
Tobias spoke with Access Hollywood about “Outlander” Episode 6, including his character’s memorable and brutish entrance at a regal outpost dinner party, and filming the scenes where Jack whipped Sam Heughan’s Jamie Fraser. Plus, the English actor shared his views on why some audiences are romantically attracted to Jack.
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AccessHollywood.com: I love the line that Lord Thomas says – that your entrance puts ‘the claret at risk.’ It really sort of describes the difference between Jack and the people sitting at that table. Jack is a very different kind of man.
Tobias Menzies: Yeah, I think Jack is a non-conformist. He is a renegade, a bit. And I think, yes, that little interaction quite eloquently sort of demonstrates that – that even within his own community, he’s maybe a bit of an outsider and he sort of is feared and sort of distrusted also amongst his own people for the [reason] that he probably just goes further than any of the others would be willing to go probably — [that] has always been my sense of it.
Access: It’s funny you [said], ‘distrusted’ ‘amongst his own people,’ because then you have that conversation, in character, with Claire, where you ask her for honesty. Does he just live in all these conflicted idea worlds?
Tobias: I don’t actually think – he’s not a stranger to honesty. That’s not incompatible with who he is actually. … I think a lot of the time he probably is unnervingly and unsettling honest and direct, which is… one of the characteristics that makes him quite a dramatic person to be around, because he isn’t really interested in small talk, I would imagine, in sort of long dinners with people like Lord Thomas. … What I hope we’ve sort of touched upon in the episode is there is something peculiar about him. For instance, the moment when he just draws her is a highly eccentric thing to do in the middle of everything and so those would also be things that would be unsettling to his senior officers. He doesn’t play it straight, he doesn’t play by the rules, I don’t think, and I think it probably makes him quite a successful and quite an efficient soldier. And I imagine there’s an element of respect amongst the men and people around him because he gets things done, but I imagine his methods are probably frowned upon.
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Access: In America we have a lot of these shows where it’s sort of the end of the world – the zombie apocalypse for example, and you have characters who in normal society, when [there was] society, would have been offbeat, a bit weird… and you put them in the zombie apocalypse and they’re huge leaders. Do you think this guy would totally kick ass if there were no boundaries for society? Like a [Thomas] Hobbes sort of state of nature style world?
Tobias: I think he’d be very engaged and interested in that. Yes, I think that’s right. His interest in Jamie is about human endurance, human strength. He encounters this young man who is able to endure more than he’s ever administered to anyone. In a very existential kind of nietzschean way, I think that excites him. And so yes, I think your instinct is right. I think Jack would probably do quite well and would be galvanized by yeah, a sort of nature, red in tooth and claw sort of environment.
Access: So, Sam said you left him with some welts in the very first scene you guys did together. True?
Tobias: Cait or Sam?
Access: Actually, both of them said that.
Tobias: (Laughs) Do you mean the welts, from the whipping? … Is that what Sam told you about?
Access: Yeah.
Tobias: Oh yes, actually, I did catch him once. He’s right. Yes, I did. I did. There was a sequence where, basically, he had like this padding strapped on to the back, so when the camera was out on the front, it meant that there were a couple of shots where I could actually hit with a proper – so the whip had leather straps on it, so then I could then appear to be hitting his back. It would have to hit this bit of foam, but you know how these angles work out. The foam kept on having to be cut thinner and thinner because the camera kept on catching the edge of it and stuff, so by the end I had this absolutely tiny bit of foam to aim at and yes, I think there might have been the one take when a bit of the whip went around the side and nicked him.
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Access: He did say it helped. He wasn’t speaking unkindly of you.
Tobias: (Laughs) He wasn’t moaning. No, it’s hard, you know, it’s hard. Whipping and health and safety doesn’t really go hand and hand. It makes it kind of tricky.
Access: And then, when you did the second scene, the greater one in this episode — on a serious note, you’ve got a crowd around you, there’s cuts, cameras… how do you stay in that role and create the intensity?
Tobias: You just go for it in a way, I suppose. I mean that’s sort of our job. That’s sort of the heart of the matter really, is…. yeah, creating something that is intense and dramatic in an environment that really feels like a sort of — you’re in a sort of street, with sort of people walking around and stuff. Yeah, (laughs) film sets often feel [like] quite sort of prosaic kind of places. … What’s fun about that scene is it’s physical and visceral and there’s also the technics of it, and it was quite a technical sequence. … But essentially, they’re great fun. They’re very, very rewarding scenes to work on because they’re dramatic and they’re raw. There’s a lot of physicality and emotion in it, and certainly for me, it’s why you want to do these sort of things.
Access: I’m curious what you think about the fact that some audiences are actually – they get excited about Jack, and I don’t know if it has to do–
Tobias: Yeah, of course they do. I don’t know… I can’t imagine why that would be surprising.
Access: No… like their hearts flutter.
Tobias: Oh you mean they’re romantically excited by him?
Access: Yes. Hearts are fluttering.
Tobias: Look at the success of ‘Fifty Shades.’ That the same muscle, isn’t it? I mean, I suppose masochism, sadomasochism is all kind of — in some way, you know, it’s not particularly drawn out in this stuff, but there’s an eroticism in these things, aren’t there, about sort of domination and subjection and I suppose, Jack’s character plays upon all those sort of themes, I think. So yeah, I’m not surprised at all (laughs).
Access: You made a really a good point. I haven’t actually read those books.
Tobias: I haven’t read them either, but I understand it’s about a sort of a sub-dom relationship at the core of it. And, I suppose there are aspects to that dynamic in how Jack treats both Claire and Jamie, actually.
Access: Good point. Now, will we get to see you again before the half-season wraps up for the year? Before the end of [Episode] 8?
Tobias: There’s lots of 8, ’cause they’ve actually — they have Frank come back in 8, so there’s a whole chunk in 8 of seeing what’s been happening with Frank, and it’s a nice episode, actually, because you sort of see kind of Frank trying to come to terms with what’s happened and a little bit of he kind of despairs and has a moment of sort of violence, where you see in a way a little bit of Jack in Frank.
Access: Has doing this made you interested at all in your own ancestry?
Tobias: Yes, I mean, I already knew quite a bit already. My paternal grandfather was very interested and made a family tree and so, I know quite a bit already, but yes, absolutely. I think by the nature of these two characters who are ancestrally linked, yeah, you can’t help but think of your own family, and also, just your own father and you know, I don’t have kids, but what it is to sort of be in a sort of family line, I guess, because that’s what’s sort of a bit goose bumpy about Claire’s interactions with these two men, is like, that’s what’s kind of a bit shivery about it.
“Outlander” airs Saturday nights at 9 PM on Starz.
— Jolie Lash
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