'Outlander' TV series: Cast learn to be Scotsmen in 'boot camp' video

A new video of interviews with some of the cast members and the executive producer of the “Outlander” TV series has surfaced online. The video shows some of the scenes from the first season of the show and also how the cast trained to play their respective roles.

The video posted on YouTube shows Caitriona Balfe (Claire) revealing that the cast had to go through a “boot camp” as soon as they reached Scotland. Executive producer Ronald D. Moore explained that the camp was to teach the cast members how to fight, to use weapons of the 1700s and also to learn how to ride horses. The cast members also learned Gaelic in the camp.

Cast members Sam Heughan (Jamie) and Tobias Menzies (Frank and Jack Randall) can be seen learning to ride horses in the video. Graham McTavish (Dougal MacKenzie) said that the camp had the “genuine” purpose of training the cast in the things that they needed to be trained in, but it also served the purpose of “bonding” the cast and crew as a group.

The last member in the group to be cast was apparently Grant O’Rourke (Rupert MacKenzie). The actor revealed that by the time he went to the camp, most of the other cast members had “massive beards,” to get into character for “Outlander” TV series, while he had a “pathetic little beard.”

O’Rourke said that the different skills that they were required to learn at the boot camp presented different challenges to each cast member. For O’Rourke it was horse riding. The actor said that he was more likely to fall off a horse than any of the other cast members and he also doesn’t have a “bond with animals.” Heughan on the other hand “enjoyed” all the horse riding and said that he prefers not to allow the stunt men to do all the work for him.

Heughan has had different jobs before he got cast in “Outlander” TV series. In a previous interview to TV Guide Magazine the actor said that he even worked in a cubicle. The actor, however, lost that job in just four days because he kept “wandering off.”

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