The sixth season of the popular Starz TV series Outlander, based on the bestselling time-travel historical romance series by Diana Gabaldon, has begun production after a lengthy delay brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Elle. The show has begun filming in Scotland with precautionary measures in place for the cast and crew.
In an interview with Elle’s Julie Kosin, executive producer Matthew B. Roberts noted that the show features “a lot of intimate scenes—that’s where we live and breathe.” As a result, the production’s safety standards focus, as he put it, on “testing, testing, testing, testing.”
Gabaldon’s series of novels began with 1991’s Outlander, which tells the story of Claire Randall, a British nurse from the 1940s who visits a magical stone circle in Scotland and is sent back in time to 1743, where she meets Scottish fugitive Jamie Fraser, whom she eventually marries. Later entries involve more time travel and a move to colonial America.
In the TV show, which began in 2014, Golden Globe–nominated actor Catriona Balfe plays Claire and Saturn Award–winner Sam Heughan plays Jamie. Each season has largely focused on events in one book of the series; the last adapted the fifth novel, 2001’s The Fiery Cross, but also included a major, disturbing plotline from the sixth, 2005’s A Breath of Snow and Ashes, in which Claire is abducted and raped by multiple men. (Lynette Rice at Entertainment Weekly and Princess Weekes at The Mary Sue published insightful articles last May about this episode, and about the series’ use of sexual assault in general.) The upcoming season is expected to concentrate on the remainder of the sixth book, which takes place in the 1770s.
Gabaldon is currently writing the long-awaited ninth book in her series, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone; in October, she tweeted that she had nearly finished. It will be the first new entry since 2014’s Written in My Own Heart’s Blood. No publication date for the new novel has been set.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
