Sam Heughan pens emotional goodbye to ‘Outlander’ as filming wraps
Sam Heughan is saying goodbye to Outlander.
The Scottish actor took to Instagram over the weekend to share a slideshow of images from his 11-year, eight-season and 101-episode tenure playing Jamie Fraser as filming on the beloved Starz series’ eighth and final season officially wrapped.
“What a journey,” he wrote alongside the snaps. “So many memories, incredible people I have been fortunate to work with and now can call friends.”
Heughan went on to shout out Diana Gabaldon, who wrote the books the show is based on, as well as his Irish co-star Caitriona Balfe, who he called “my brilliant partner in crime.”
“Today marks the final day of filming on the final season of #Outlander. Words cannot express the gratitude owed to each and every hard-working cast and crew member who brought this incredible series to life and every single fan who supports it with passion, creativity, and dedication,” the show’s post reads. “Outlander really is more than just a show, it’s a family, and while filming might be ending, there’s so much more to this journey that’s just beginning.”
Also included in the show’s post is a slideshow featuring cast members holding clapboards and sharing what they wanted to take from the set after filming wrapped.
Heughan revealed he’d like to take Jamie’s kilt home with him, while Balfe hilariously shared on her clapboard that she’ll be taking “a nap.”
The second half of Outlander season 7 premieres Nov. 22 on Starz. No premiere date for the eighth and final season has yet been announced.
Back in June, Sir Ian McKellen seemed to downplay a fall off a London stage during a performance of the Shakespeare adaptation Player Kings. A statement at the time said he was in good spirits and would make a speedy recovery. But now, several months later, McKellen reveals the whole thing was pretty scary.
“Apparently, I’m told by the company manager who’s holding my head as I lay on the floor, I said to her, ‘I’ve broken my neck. I’m dying,'” McKellen told ABC Audio in an interview from his home in London. “Now, I don’t remember saying that, but I must have felt it.”
He says he’s fine now, after fracturing his wrist and hurting his back, crediting the fat suit he was wearing in order to play rotund Knight John Falstaff with protecting his ribs and hips in the fall. And while physically he’s almost completely back to normal, the mental effects linger.
“I’m left with some disappointment,” McKellen confesses. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t complete — you know, my pride was bruised. How could this happen to me?” he asks with a chuckle. “And I suspect that although physically I’m healing, I wonder whether deep down there’s something mental or emotional that was jolted that needs to be attended to. And I’m attending to it by not working at the moment and resting.”
McKellen appears to be in a reflective mood as he discusses the fall, and his new film The Critic, in which he plays a prominent 1930s London theater critic named Jimmy Erskine, a once feared and respected tastemaker trying to recapture his glory days. Reviews, McKellen reveals, are a necessary evil for actors.
“We are seeking for approval. And we’re probably rather pathetic people who need that approval. We’re not confident enough of ourselves. So if you get a good review — oh, it’s an added pleasure. And if you get a bad review, it can be very hurtful,” McKellen admits.
And although he hasn’t been on the receiving end of a lot of bad reviews, the ones he has had are seared in his brain. Take for instance his turn in a Bernard Shaw revival in London’s West End when he was much younger. He starred in the play alongside a pre-Dame Judi Dench and recalls how he overheard a few fellow actors discussing his performance one night at a restaurant.
“One of them was going on and on and on about how dreadful I’d been. And I was typical of these modern young actors, using my voice in the wrong way and drawing attention to myself. And he just simply hadn’t enjoyed it.” McKellen says he laughed off the criticism, but the next night onstage it crept into his consciousness. “And as I looked into the audience talking away, I suddenly thought, ‘My God, every single person in this audience agrees with that actor that I heard last night. They all think I’m rubbish. I shouldn’t be here.’” He says he froze, forgot his lines and Dench had to rescue him.
Still, he swears if there’s a bad review out there, he’s going to read it. “I like to know. If people haven’t enjoyed the film of Cats I’d like to know about it.” 2019’s film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical Cats was savaged by critics, probably the worst-reviewed film McKellen has ever been in. McKellen didn’t get the blame, though. His portrayal of Gus the Theater Cat was mostly praised. And he may be returning to a role that garnered him some of the most praise of his film career: the mighty wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings movies.
“There are going to be a couple of more films, I think, with some of the same characters in it. And I’ve been asked to stand by,” McKellen says. “But there’s no script that I read, and no date. All I can say, as far as I’m concerned, they better be quick.”
Quick, because at 85 years old, McKellen isn’t sure how much time he has left. “I’m rather living a year at a time, rather than two or three years at a time,” he says.
Gandalf is a part of his legacy, so if he can, he’s going to go to New Zealand and put on the robes. Legacy is a theme in The Critic, as well. In his downtime, legacy and what’s next are things McKellen has been thinking about a lot. He remembers going to visit a friend in the hospital, a friend who was dying, and asking him what he was thinking about as his life neared the end.
“And he said, ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’ And that’s rather my view,” McKellen says wistfully. He wants to know what’s going to happen. “How is AI going to really take over? I mean, what is life going to be like? When is the world going to settle down? Is the world going to survive? I won’t know. I won’t know. And I suppose I won’t care because I won’t exist.”
Speaking to ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis in an interview with Good Morning Americawhich aired on Thursday, the multi-hyphenate media mogul said, “We are in for the ride of our lives” with the technology.
“Life for all of us is about to be very different,” she said.
Winfrey told Jarvis she has always seen herself as “the surrogate viewer” of the topics she explores and understands that if she is curious to understand something, she isn’t the only one.
“If I don’t know the answer, I know that the other millions of people who are watching are feeling the same,” she said, adding that her first encounter with the AI didn’t happen until her first conversation with Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, the company behind the AI-based virtual assistant ChatGPT.
She continued, “After he was telling me about all the things that I could do, I was saying, ‘Okay, don’t be scared. Don’t be scared. You can get the ChatGPT app.'”
Winfrey shared her first experience with ChatGPT was asking the app to provide AirBnb listings for a friend.
“And it was miraculous to me that before you can practically finish the requests, the answer has come back to you,” she said.
In the new ABC primetime special, Winfrey explores “the profound impact of artificial intelligence on people’s daily lives, demystifying the technology and empowering viewers to understand and navigate the rapidly evolving AI future,” according to a press release.
AI and the Future of Us will premiere on Thursday, Sept. 12 on ABC at 8 pm E.T. and be available to stream on Hulu the next day.
During Netflix’s live Geeked Week send-off event in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday night, host — and out and proud geek — Joe Manganiello announced he has stepped up his nerd cred even more.
The Magic Mike star will be joining the cast of One Piece, Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the beloved and bestselling manga, for its second season.
The actor will play the iconic villain Mr. 0; also joining the show will be Bumper in Berlin alumna Lera Abova playing Miss Sunday.
The series stars Iñaki Godoy as straw hat-wearing swashbuckler Monkey D. Luffy, who sets off with his crew —Mackenyu as Roronoa Zoro, Emily Rudd as Nami, Jacob Romero as Usopp and Taz Skylar as Sanji — to find the fabled article of treasure that shares the series’ title.
One Piece managed to avoid the pitfalls of other adaptations, like Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop, by becoming a smash out of the gate.
The live-action version of Eiichiro Oda‘s pirate saga debuted on Aug. 31, 2023, at #1 on the streaming service’s English language TV chart and the top 10 in 93 countries. In its first four days, it racked up 140.1 million hours of viewing time, right up there with the debuts of massive hits like Stranger Things season 4 and Wednesday.