SDCC Interview – Ronald D. Moore – Outlander

Q: Does Claire think about her future, that it may be gone if she does change it?

Ron: A little bit. You know it’s tricky. We are trying to not put too much of the…we never call them different timelines. We never try to get too far into the science fiction aspect of it. We try to play enough of it, so that the concept is clear to the audience. There are definitely some things she worries about that could be changed by her actions in the past, but we try not to get too bogged down into the butterfly effect of this or that because God knows by now the future is taken over by Nazis as far as she knows.

The MacGuffin: Since it is a larger book and you have three fewer episodes, was it a challenge to fit as much as possible into those 13 episodes? (By the way, Dragonfly in Amber is the shortest book in the series, not Outlander. I always forget that.)

Ron: Definitely. Another three would have helped, but that’s the gig. It’s still more episodes than Starz typically shows, so I am fine with them. I knew going in there was going to be 13. Fortunately, it is the thinnest of the books. It’s not like the next one (Voyager). The third book is a whole different animal.

Outlander SDCC TV Still 7

Q: Is there talk of splitting (Voyager) into two seasons?

Ron: We talk about it, but we haven’t…no decision has been made. I haven’t really focused on it yet. I don’t have a third season pickup, so I don’t have that problem yet.  Eventually, we will have to have that discussion. I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe, maybe not. We’ve always talked about doing a book a season, but there are books that are just big and complicated, but once you do that…Okay, are we ever going to get to book eight or nine? You just start thinking about how many years we are talking about and I don’t know. I really don’t know the answer to that yet.

Q: Season one was split into two and the key art was definitively and decidedly different. The blue, kind of glowing, beautiful hues of Scotland to the grittier, darker, more dangerous second half. In season two, the first half is in Paris, or at least the first part, and then they return to Scotland. Has the look been decided?

Ron: The key art?

Outlander SDCC TV Still 6

Q: The key art or the tone? Obviously if you read the book, you know what happens, but as far as the look you want to give it. Is it the same Scotland or the one she came to?

Ron: The Scotland will be a war-torn Scotland, so it will be a heavier, darker, more threatening environment when the story gets back to Scotland. But the Parisian part is much richer and much more romantic. It is a different world and we play that, so visually, it is shot different. It has a different kind of mood and feeling to it. We have not done the key art campaign yet.

Q: The Emmy nominations will be coming up soon. Starz made a big push to have fans tweet out and push for Emmy nominations. Your wife (Terry Dresbach, costume designer) has made no secret of the fact that she does not care for this, that she does think Emmys mean a lot. What do you think awards mean to the show or to your career?

Ron: What it means to me is that I would like to go back to Scotland and say, “You know what? Your work matters. Those people back at the TV Academy recognized you and they are your peers.” I think it matters. I like those people in all those different departments and the cast…these people work very, very hard. They work harder than I do, trust me. They are out lugging cameras around in the dead of the night in the goddamn snow. That’s tough. So, to be able to go back and say, “Hey, here is some goal or recognition.” I think it matters to the morale of the show. I think it matters that people be acknowledged. If you don’t get it, okay, that’s fine. (Battlestar Galactica) was ignored year after year after year. We were still very proud of it, and we were still like, “Screw the world!”  You know you are doing a great show and we really felt that way. But it was always really annoying to me that Edward James Olmos never got a nomination. He is one of those great actors and did fantastic work and I could not believe year after year, he was ignored. So those things are kind of frustrating. I don’t think Terry cares one way or another, but I want them to recognize her work. I think she has done fabulous work and same goes for the cast and same goes for the cinematographers and on and on and on. I think all these people do really good stuff and it would be nice to have recognition.

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