Jamie Roy was about to tee off when his agent rang. He’d planned to celebrate his 30th birthday by playing golf with two friends. After answering the phone, he collapsed onto the grass. His friend prodded his shoulder and asked what he’d heard. Roy wasn’t allowed to divulge – frustrating! – but he’d just been cast as a leading character, Brian Fraser, in Outlander: Blood of My Blood. “I think I blacked out for that first hole,” Roy says.
The phone call had been a long time coming. Roy didn’t grow up dreaming of films and fame. He completed a degree in accounting and entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University, and landed a management consultancy job at a big firm in the US. “I realised that being behind a desk just wasn’t for me. It wasn’t challenging and it was just boring for the most part,” Roy explains.
He’d been taking acting classes in Govan, and decided he enjoyed that far more. Roy studied at the New York Film Academy in Miami. He spent three years performing as the Frozen character Kristoff in a “beautiful blonde wig” at Walt Disney World Orlando. Then he moved to Los Angeles and took any part he could get.
Small roles in TV movies became monotonous. “That really wasn’t what I wanted to do,” he admits. “The whole reason I got into acting was to tell really good stories that mean something. I decided that I wasn’t going to work again until I found something that I was really passionate about, that mattered.” He didn’t work for two years until his agent phoned him on the golf course about Blood of My Blood. In that triumphant moment, he knew the wait had been worth it.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood is the much-hyped prequel to Outlander, the long-running historical drama series that boasts millions of devoted fans around the world. The show tells the story of how the parents of the Outlander protagonists – Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser – fell in love. Roy stars as Jamie’s father, Brian Fraser, with Harriet Slater playing Jamie’s mother, Ellen Mackenzie. The pair meet in the Scottish Highlands amid the 1715 Jacobite rising. The narrative will also follow Claire’s parents, Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine), during the First World War. (Time-travel is a major part of Outlander.)
The story stands by itself, so viewers who aren’t up to date with Outlander can still give Blood of My Blood a go. However you might want to prep a little as there will be plenty of nods to the original show for the benefit of long-term fans. Unlike Outlander, Blood of My Blood isn’t directly based on a book, although the novels’ author, Diana Gabaldon, is heavily involved. The producers had more freedom to experiment with the genre.
“It’s got something for everybody,” Roy says, “It really isn’t just a romance thing. Guys who don’t want to watch a romance thing will see some World War I action. Some of those sequences are really special.”
He had a clear vision of how Brian Fraser should look. He spent six months hitting the gym and working with a trainer online. “This was my excuse to really go at it hard.” As much of Outlander consists of moody Scottish warriors galloping across the highlands – a large part of its appeal – Roy was required to take horse riding lessons, which went better than anticipated.
“I realised that horses were just like big dogs. When you’re on them, if you’re not in control and don’t tell them what to do, they’ll just take advantage of you and start doing their own thing. So the more confident you can be with them, the more they’re like, ‘Alright, cool’.”
To find Brian’s character, Roy wandered around the Highlands listening to Bear McCreary’s pounding Outlander soundtrack. “That does wonders for the imagination. It’s great, just being out in the Highlands and hearing that music and just looking at the surrounding world, thinking of the story. All that kind of stuff fed into my soul.” He also delved into 18th-century Scottish history, a tumultuous period marked by the Scottish Enlightenment and the Jacobite Risings.
Sam Heughan, the two-time Square Mile cover who stars as Jamie Fraser in Outlander, phoned Roy up just as production was starting. “He really has been so supportive since day one,” says Roy of his fictional son. “He told me congratulations, and how excited he was to see how his parents met. I constantly remind myself of what he told me that first time – to really enjoy it, and to breathe, and take it at your own pace. Because it passes very, very quickly.”
Harriet Slater portrays Brian’s future wife, Ellen Mackenzie. The pair are from rival clans but when they encounter each other, the chemistry is instant. (It sounds very Romeo and Juliet with added tartan and horses.) When Roy first met Slater, they clicked in a similar way.
“I’d already seen seven other actors for the role of Ellen,” he recalls. Each one of them was fantastic, but none of them really had that spark I wanted to feel. Meeting her, I was like, ‘wow’. We get along really, really well as people. And then when we started acting together, it just clicked. Both of us, non-romantically, were two spirits that just really saw each other. We become best buds.”
Slater and Roy bonded by adventuring around Glasgow on a quest to find the city’s best Negroni. The conclusion? Roy made the nicest cocktails, anyway. They climbed mountains The Cobbler and Ben Lomond together, plus a large hill called Ben A’an. Roy had to lie about the ascent’s steepness to lure Slater up there. One trusts she forgave him on seeing the view.
Blood of My Blood was shot in Perthshire at Balvaird Castle and Doune Castle; the latter features as Castle Leoch throughout Outlander. Although most of the cast liked to reread notes and skim scripts in between takes, Roy became known for distracting everyone else. “I just love chatting. And eating. Those are my two hobbies.”
After a long day on set, he unwinds by walking his dog Rock – who stirs from his snooze at the mention of his name. “I’m a big believer that a good walk solves most problems.” Although a guitar and keyboard are neatly positioned against the wall in his immaculate living room, Roy insists he’s “not a musician by any means”. Despite performing for a living, he gets “so nervous – like, terrified” whenever he plays instruments in front of people.
Outlander fans will be able to trace Jamie Fraser’s roots back to Brian and Ellen, Roy promises. “Jamie is a combination of Brian and Ellen,” he explains, “so he definitely gets his fieriness from Ellen. Brian is a lot more pragmatic, and less quick-tempered. Jamie will punch first and ask questions later, whereas Brian will very much ask questions first, and punch if he has to. He’s a man of very, very strong morals. He definitely doesn’t resort to fighting as a first protocol. But when that line is crossed, there’s no question he’ll defend the ones he loves.”
Although Roy’s parents have a home in Glasgow, they spend half their time in the States. When the folks were away, he would invite the cast round to exploit the bar and karaoke machine in the basement. One night, after “a few drinks”, it seemed like a terrific idea to climb a huge crane outside the house. (Apologies to any producers reading this interview.) Slater and Irvine posed on the edge like Rose and Jack on the Titanic deck before Roy managed to usher them back down.
Roy is a self-proclaimed nerd – the fantasy novel Onyx Storm is waiting on the coffee table, and two boxes of the board game Catan are propping up his computer. He feels Brian is cut from the same cloth as the heroes of romantasy book series – particularly Rhysand from Sarah J Maas’s popular A Court of Thorns and Roses saga.
“Rhysand is a bit of a tortured soul,” says Roy. “He’s been through a lot and he really has to put up this front because he’s a leader, and people see one version of him. Eventually we see that vulnerable, romantic, deeply caring side. And Brian is actually very, very similar. He’s been through a lot with his abusive father, growing up being a bastard, and being shunned from society. But he has a deep vulnerability we only really see with Ellen.”
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Outlander has a devoted fanbase – both covers with Heughan were among the most popular in the magazine’s history. “I know that life as I know it is going to change,” Roy admits. The audience will be quite a bit larger than the crowds at Walt Disney World’s Frozen show but Roy is phlegmatic about the spotlight. “That’s what comes with telling these kinds of stories on these platforms. And every day, I would happily trade off a wee bit of my personal life and privacy to be able to tell these stories which mean so much to so many people.”
The Outlander shows draw in Roy, like so many viewers, because they enable people to escape to a different world. He always chooses fantasy and historical fiction. He dreams of being cast as a character within the Lord of the Rings or Magic: The Gathering universes. (The latter is a trading card game.) “I tried to grow up and read non-fiction things, but I always get dragged back into these crazy worlds.”
He hopes viewers will find the setting of Blood of My Blood just as absorbing as those magical realms. “Most people that I know weren’t alive in the early 1700s. Unless there are some vampires living among us. Or fairies. But the impressive sets and the costumes transport people back in time. It’s so easy to lose yourself in it.
“These worlds are so different, but the characters are so human and relatable, that it’s easy for viewers to put themselves in the positions of Ellen and Brian. Even though we’re in these fantasy worlds, we see ourselves in those fantasies. And I think that’s pretty amazing.”
For Jamie Roy, the fantasy has only just begun. May he live it for many years yet.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood premieres in the UK on Saturday, 9 August on MGM+
