Lucky for us, Roger remains alive and well … sort of.
Rankin is here to tell us all about it.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY First off, how is isolation?
Credit: Aimee Spinks/Starz
What are you doing?
How are you spending your hours?
RICHARD RANKINWell, I’m in my den right now, I’m folding towels, Lynette.
That’s what I’m doing, I’m folding towels.
That’s what I’ve been doing for a week, it feels like.
I’m staying active both mentally and physically, at least trying to.
I have never had such an organized household.
Staying fit, I venture to get the exercise in on a daily basis.
So I’m staying positive.
Let’s go back to the beginning of the season.
That wasn’t the talk with me.
I don’t know if that was the talk amongst the upper echelons.
So I had thought of it that.
Those songs that you sang, was that a collaborative process?
I believe that was the writers.
I didn’t have any sort of influence on the music this season.
But “Clementine” was my own arrangement on the guitar.
Episode 507 was so exciting yet obviously so traumatic.
What were those final days like with Duncan Lacroix?
Maybe just as many times over season four and season three.
Duncan’s been leavingOutlanderfor a long time.
He’s a great actor.
I just love the cat, a very humble, very giving, very honest actor.
He really will be missed.
The whole scene with Graham McTavish was scary as hell.
We wanted that threat.
Obviously we’re very aware of the fact that we have different fans.
I think there’s a sort of dread about it.
We want something they’re not expecting to see.
So it’s interesting to see what their reaction is to all of this was.
It was sort of an Easter egg for our viewers.
In the book Roger actually kisses Morag.
Choices are made for adaptive reasons.
But in a TV show where you only get one episode of seeing Roger kiss another women?
That’s not going to go down well with anyone, really.
That’s just going to look like an absolute betrayal of Brianna.
We want people to feel for Roger.
We want people to feel that kind of sympathy for him and kind of be rooting for him.
You know what I mean?
Can you talk about Roger’s sadness?
What really is going on there?
Well it’s depression, mostly.
There are many things going on.
He’s also been at a real breaking point.
There’s a lot for him to overcome.
[The hanging] was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back.
This whole 18th century journey has just been weighing on him so much.
The scenes could have played out in quite a negative way for Roger.
But every time he tries something, it sort of smacks him in the face.
So it’s difficult.
One of his strongest characteristics is communication.
I think he just feels like he’s been stripped of everything that he was.
So it goes to a really, really dark place.
