- In episode 5 of Outlander: Blood of my Blood, star-crossed lovers Ellen MacKenzie and Brian Fraser escalate their relationship when they cross paths at Beltane.
- However, Ellen is at Beltane expressly to strengthen her relationship with her betrothed, Malcolm Grant.
- Harriet Slater and Jamie Roy weigh in on Brian and Ellen’s choices.
This article contains spoilers about season 1, episode 5 of Outlander: Blood of my Blood, “Needfire.”
“Ruin me.”
With those two words, Ellen MacKenzie changes the course of her life and Brian Fraser’s forever. In episode 5 of Outlander: Blood of my Blood, Ellen (Harriet Slater) reconnects with Brian (Jamie Roy) at the Beltane festival, dancing with him before sneaking off to speak with him in private.
The two take refuge in a nearby ruin, escalating their kissing until Brian tells Ellen he won’t be able to stop if they keep going. Ellen’s response? “Ruin me.” The two then perform a traditional handfast ceremony (“blood of my blood, bone of my bone”) and seal the deal by making love, irrevocably tying themselves to each other.
Sanne Gault/Starz
“It is a year and a day since being handfast to wed, so it’s an engagement,” Slater tells Entertainment Weekly, before Roy adds, “It’s a promise. And you can’t go back on your word. Going back on your word in those days was the equivalent of breaking the law essentially.”
Though Brian is tied to his word and honor as a man, for Ellen, it’s an even bigger choice losing her virginity to a man who is not the one to whom she is betrothed.
“It’s a huge moment,” says Slater. “It’s such a pivotal point in their relationship. And they’re both changed forever after that moment. They’re all in. You can’t take that back, especially the fact that Ellen is no longer a virgin, which was a huge deal.”
The scene itself is beautiful, shot in streams of afternoon sunlight with a romantic sheen. But Slater says that trying to deliver the line, “Ruin me,” was quite the challenge, particularly because she knew it would be a memorable moment in this epic love story.
“I was so nervous about that line,” she admits. “Honestly, I cracked up every time reading it just because of the modern connotations of it. And I knew that it was gonna be a big important line, and I was so scared of messing it up.”
Adds Roy: “I was like, ‘This is going to be the line of the show.'”
Sanne Gault/Starz
The scene also required both actors, who are relative newcomers, to do a nude love scene, an inevitable part of the Outlander story, but a daunting task all the same. “It is always going to be nerve-wracking doing nudity,” says Slater. “But we felt like we were in a very safe environment. It was a closed set. Only the people that absolutely had to be there were there. We had an intimacy coordinator, who we’d worked with before rehearsing the scenes. We knew exactly what we were going to have to do. It felt like a collaborative process. We’d had chats about it with the director, the producers, the intimacy coordinator, each other — and we really trust each other. ”
The moment is also nerve-wracking for the character of Ellen MacKenzie given what’s at stake. She’s promised to Malcolm Grant (Jhon Lumsden) and is at Beltane to ostensibly cement their promise to each other. And it’s not as if Malcolm is a bridge troll. “It’s a tough one because on paper he’s kind of perfect,” reflects Slater. “He’s lovely. He loves her. He’s from a very powerful clan. They’d make a very powerful, strong couple. He respects her.
Sanne Gault/Starz
“I felt like such a liar in those scenes because she has to pretend that everything’s fine and that she wants to marry him because his father is a very dangerous man,” Slater continues. “Her life is at stake so she really can’t let on that she doesn’t want to marry this guy. And yet, it’s such a difficult situation because she doesn’t want to marry him. She wants to marry Brian. She’s completely torn.”
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By episode’s end, Ellen has only made her situation worse after handfasting herself to Brian and sleeping with him. As Slater says, “It changes them forever and that really is the point of no return.”
Outlander: Blood of my Blood airs new episodes on Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Starz. Episodes are also available the same day on the Starz app.
