Episode 309 - "The Doldrums"

The Official Outlander Podcast Episode 309 - The Doldrums

Drink of the week: Irish coffee with Jameson Irish Whiskey

Toni: Hi everyone. We’re doing this a little differently this year. You won’t be able to hear the episode in the background of the podcast, so in order to sync up the show with what we’re saying, you should pause now and hit play as soon as the main titles start. [0:14]

[0:17] Matt: Hey everyone, welcome to the Outlanderpodcast. This is episode 309, “The Doldrums,” written by Shannon Goss. I’m here, uh, well, I am Matt Roberts, executive producer. And I’m here with Toni Graphia, executive producer

Toni: Good morning everyone

Matt: Oh, right, it’s morning

Toni: Uh, I think this is the earliest podcast we’ve ever done, it’s like nine o’clock in the morning

Matt: Yeah

Toni: I can’t believe either of us are here this early but um, today we’re drinking Irish coffee, since it’s so early and we’re using Jameson Irish Whiskey and uh, the Irish are known for their superstitions and this is an episode about superstitions.

Matt: I guess, I guess you can segue it in like that, that was very nice

Toni: Wasn’t that, wasn’t that clever? (laughs)

Matt: That was very smooth, yes

Toni: I just made that up this morning

Matt: Yeah, that’s good. I think everybody’s uh, every culture has their superstition but

Toni:  Yes, well the Scots certainly do

Matt: They do, yeah. So here we are. Uh, you’ve noticed the main titles have changed slightly. Um, we added a few more elements in

Toni: Some drums, some Caribbean, some Caribbean sound. Bear did a great job with that, I love the change, the shift in tone4

Matt: Yeah, there’s um, there’s some ships going on and...

Toni: The Artemis

Matt: ...ocean and so we’ll uh, we’ll be mixing it up a little bit uh, come the second half of the season. Um, this was actually a pretty big undertaking for us uh, to completely move the unit um, to, well, we didn’t move the unit we moved um, a select few uh, all the HOD’s, uh, heads of department

Toni: Heads of, heads of departments

Matt: And um, obviously the actors and um, producers, we went down to South Africa to film quite a bit of the second half of the season. This particular scene was filmed in um, Scotland before we left. Um, in Denure harbour. We completely refit Denure and uh, we added the, the ship, the Artemis was added uh, with visual effects uh, later. So there was just a green, kind of green shape over there.

Toni: The boat, the, the boat they're taking wasn’t even there

Matt: It wasn’t.

Toni: (laughs) Cousin Jared

Matt: Cousin Jared. Uh, that’s where the, so if people remember, I know, I know the devout, the, the dedicated fans will know that Jared is uh, the apartment they stayed in France was Jared’s and uh, so once again they call on him for help.

[3:05] Toni: Now they’re going to rescue Young Ian who was...

Matt: Yeah, well they kept that prom, they made that promise, you know

Toni: ...nabbed, nabbed by pirates in the last episode

Matt: They made the promise and they can’t go back on it.

Toni: Yeah, basically as soon as Jamie said, “We’ll keep the boy safe,” he was snatched up (laughs)

Matt: Yeah

Toni: And taken to the, to the ocean

Matt: I, I will have to say this about the, the, both the books and the television show uh, talking about luck. Jamie Fraser has bad luck. Just on a daily basis, bad things happen to Jamie Fraser

Toni: Well. But he’s, he’s resilient. He can take it

Matt: He, he can. I’m not saying he can’t take it, I’m just saying, you know

Toni: Yeah, he, he does have an inordinate amount of crazy stuff happening to him

Matt: Yeah, yeah. (coughs) Excuse me

Toni: Oh, there’s your favorite guys

Matt: I do like uh, Lesley and Hayes. I, I, I think, you know, we, we miss uh, Angus and Rupert um, Stephen and Grant brought a lot to the, to the show and uh, Keith and James here also do a lovely job adding um, yeah, so that ship was not there. That was uh, CGI

Toni: Wow

Matt: Looks beautiful, though, doesn’t it?

Toni: It does, it does

Matt: They did, uh, Richard Briscoe does our visual effects um, really, just has taken us up a, a level this year

Toni: Right

Matt: Oh well he worked last year too, but just with all the, the ship stuff he really had to elevate the game

Toni: These guys, we’re establishing here that uh, Hayes is not the biggest fan of uh, sailing. He does not like ships

Matt: And if you, if you heard that um, we know they were in Ardsmuir

Toni: Right

Matt: So that last line where he says, “I’ve been on a ship twice.”

Toni: Right

Matt: Well, two times in the sense of he’s gone to the, he went to the Colonies, we don’t know where, and they he came back after his indentured servitude was over and he came back to uh, Scotland, he made it back, whereas a lot of the uh, indentured servants don’t make it back

[5:13] Toni: We, we love, we absolutely love those two actors and both of them but uh, Hayes, we particularly, he had a particularly unique audition process uh, when we were auditioning the two of these characters we had every guy read uh, both, come in for both parts essentially so we could figure out a good pair. And this guy, James Allenby-Kirk, he actually auditioned, instead of two separate auditions for each character, he auditioned with himself by somehow filming himself, editing it to where he was both Hayes and

Matt: Yes, and Lesley

Toni: ...Lesley. And it, it cut back and forth so when we were watching the audition it took us a second, cause we watch hundreds of these things and we went, “Wait a minute, that’s the same guy! He’s not auditioning with someone else, he’s auditioning with himself,” and he completely changed character for both sides of it, and it was just, it was the most unique audition I’ve ever seen, it blew us away and we’re like, “Alright, we gotta give him one of these roles.”

Matt: Yeah

Toni: We made him Hayes and we just, we, we really love him, we love both of them.

[6:11] Matt: So this, this was filmed um, on our backlot in South Africa. This, the ship is a, a real ship. Um, we add the movement in post, we don’t, we, the cameras move slightly but not a lot and we don’t move the ship back and forth because all the actors would get, and the crew, would get seasick. Especially uh, uh, Jamie Fraser. But we uh, we add the, a lot of these elements um, afterward in post to give the sense of movement we move the horizon line so um, cause that’s a visual effect, they’re not actually on water. They’re, that, we surround the entire ship with um, green screen and um, uh, we create, we create the movement um, afterwards in post.

Toni: Yeah, it's a little disorienting for us, the writers, cause when we watch um, back in L.A. when we’re watching the dailies, these ships are just surrounded by green and so you’re just watching this big green thing and it’s, you have to use your imagination to picture that the water is there. Otherwise it’s pretty boring to watch, cause

Matt: Well you definitely, in editing it, it, when you first see them it’s very tough to, to wrap your head around what, you know, what’s going on and, and, you know outside the, outside the uh, the gunnels.

Toni: Yeah.

Matt: So look who decided to show up. This is uh

Toni: Ahh, little vixen shows up and she’s, she’s snagged her a Frenchman

Matt: Cesar and, and uh, who, Mars, well, Marsali is…

Toni: Marsali parsley

Matt: ...Lauren Lyle who is uh, knocked us out in auditions and she showed up obviously in the last episode. Um, causing a little trouble in eight

Toni: Yeah. They sort of had uh, obviously a secret romance that we didn’t know anything about and then, Jamie didn’t know anything about. He is quite shocked. I, I love how, I love how bitchy she is to Claire (laughs).

[8:25] Matt: What I like about...

Toni: What a hellish nerve we have on her

Matt: ...uh, Lauren is great is that she stands up to uh, Jamie. Lauren, Lauren is not um, let’s just say she’s not a six foot

Toni: She’s not a fading flower (laughs)

Matt: She’s not six four so uh, but you, you would think she is. She's right there eye to eye with Jamie and I, I really

Toni: She’s her mother’s daughter

Matt: I really like that. She’s calling his bluff. I would not want to play poker with Marsali

Toni: No. I love just how sheepish uh, Fergus looks, too. He’s like, “I don’t know, she’s out of control. She’s my girlfriend, she’s just, she says whatever. I just…” (laughs)

Matt: I think there is a, a moment early in this episode where Jamie and Claire kind of embrace, get a little jokey with each other and, at the end of eight they were a little bit um, uh, out of step, you would say. Um, I think once Claire decides this is, at least in my mind, once Claire decides to get on that ship

Toni: Right

Matt: She’s all in. there’s no more, “Do we belong together?” That’s gone, you know, that’s gone in the wind. They belong together, they’re going to be together. They have, they have a mission, is to, you know, find Young Ian but also it’s just

Toni: Yeah, he’s her family. Young Ian is her family too, there’s no denying it, so she’s all in with Jamie here.

[10:09] Matt: I like uh, you know, obviously he’s, one of Jamie Fraser’s uh, very few faults is that he gets seasick

Toni: Right

Matt: I think he also can’t wink. Uh, I remember thinking, “How are we gonna work that into a dilemma for Jamie?” Uh, is he signaling someone from across a party like, “Let’s go,” but he can’t wink so they have to stay the whole party? (Toni laughs) It’s like, you know, what are you gonna do?

Toni: I don’t know if we’ve ever made a storyline out of the wink yet, though, so

Matt: Cause you can’t, how do you do that? It’s just, it’s really

Toni: Well, it’s a challenge but I, I throw down the gauntlet, Matt Roberts, I am, you gotta get it in there

Matt: Well originally, I think originally uh, Superman couldn’t wink either but, you know

Toni: Oooh

Matt: They took that out because how do you work that into a storyline?

Toni: Yeah that’s, that’s a challenge

Matt: Uh, nice that they brought some stuff from Lallybroch so they have some clothing. Oh Jamie, he’s a sentimental fool, isn’t he? Well not a fool, but

Toni: Well, here’s where, you know, Terry, our costume designer, well who’s uh, let us know that uh, one of the things that they did back then was repurpose clothes a lot where they would sew ‘em together uh, pieces of clothes and, and patch things because clothes were so valuable you didn’t just throw them out, you know, if they got worn out you used them over and over so, you know, these clothes would’ve been kept at Lallybroch, the clothes from France that were very valuable. Some of them might have been sold for, for money. Some of them would have been, you know, repurposed and, and altered so that others, others could use them, but of course Jamie, you know, he, some of the more special dresses I guess he saved. Um, but they brought them, they have them here on the trip and um, and Marsali’s wearing, I believe, Claire’s cloak.

Matt: Um, I love how Claire just gets right to work. She’s uh. (laughs) I like how, I like how Caitriona played that (laughing) like

Toni: “Who’s our president? Oh wait, we don’t have presidents yet.” (laughs)

Matt: Yeah, so. But she, she gets kind of, like, “Yeah, I know we’re on a ship, you got that right.” That’s an easy one. We tried to mix up uh, some of the accents here because uh, once again, this was filmed in South Africa, so we had a, a bunch of different um, cultures and ethnic groups down there so we wanted to show that the, the, the ships that travel around the world, which the Artemis does, would have a mix, it just wouldn’t be all Scots, so

Toni: Yeah, they’d have a very diverse crew

Matt: Exactly

Toni: I think this guy’s supposed to be Italian.

Matt:  He is. Manetti

Toni: Manzetti

Matt: Manzetti. Sorry, there was a z, I dropped the z. Isn’t the zsilent? (laughs)

Toni: Manze…(laughs) Manzetti! (with an Italian accent)

Matt: Oh, right. Toni’s uh

Toni: I’m Italian, so

Matt: Toni’s Italian and I’m half Italian so

Toni: Yeah. That’s probably why we get along

Matt: Yeah, or fight all the time

Toni: (laughing) Exactly

Matt: I have, I have a vendetta, I, I

Toni: Italians can fight and fight and they still love each other, that’s the thing about them

Matt: That’s true. But we ho, I have that vendetta against you, so

Toni: Yeah, I do too, boy, if you ever cross me, forget it

Matt: Man, that’s why Toni and I never turn our backs on each other. (they both laugh) So Jamie’s trying to lay down the law and, and I think uh, Fergus is throwing it right back in his face and, what better argument is to use his love for Claire?

Toni: Yeah, yeah. “Well this is what you did, milord?”

Matt: Yeah. “You loved her. You got married. You didn’t even know her.”

Toni: Yeah. Jamie’s not buying it, though

Matt: Yeah. I, they, hair and makeup did a nice job here with, with uh, Sam, you know, they’ve, they put some sweat on him and then obviously Sam took it, took it, the, the next step and, you actually feel like he’s kind of seasick, you know?

Toni: Yeah

(silence)

[14:43] Matt: Once again, I think he’s throwing that back at Jamie using what Jamie did in the last few episodes against him

Toni: The secrets Jamie had, yeah. Cause Fergus had quite a bit of a past. He’s quite a ladies’ man and uh, he’s had a lot of dalliances, apparently. But uh, with Marsali um, she’s the one and he, you know, he’s like, “That’s proof that I love her cause I haven’t, I haven’t bedded her yet,” um, which says a lot.

Matt: It, it, it does. I mean this just slightly, um, kind of a modern take on, on uh, courting. Um, Marsali would actually be quite old in this period and so would, so would Fergus

Toni: Yeah, yeah. She, would, she’d be like an old maid back then cause they got married so young

Matt: Yeah. I think when we originally wrote the, these scenes, uh, when Shannon first did the, the writer’s draft, wasn’t the

Toni: Jamie here

Matt: Jamie was here.

Toni: Yeah, I think Jamie was in this scene and we decided it was a stronger scene just with the captain, you know, going head to head, or Claire going head to head with the captain was more interesting so we just were like, “But how, she would never dine alone with the, with a man on the ship. How can we fix that?” And then we’re like, “Ah, Jamie’s seasick!” So just, let’s just say he

Matt: Well, and also Jamie is uh, so close the, the cabins, cause this is, we built the, we built these um, sets on, on stage. So this isn’t actually underneath the ship. We only use that as the top deck. And then these stages, or these sets are built on, on stage so um, we can control the light and. Once again you see the cameras moving slightly to give, to give a feeling of movement um, we can also do a little bit of that in post but um, yeah Jamie would be five feet away so he could probably hear this whole conversation if he was really listening

[16:55] Toni: Yeah, if anything inappropriate happens he’ll just burst through the wall like, there’ll just be a hole in the wall and Jamie’ll just crash through (laughs)

Matt: Well I remember getting a note from, I can’t remember where, but it was, you know, wouldn’t, wouldn’t Claire be afraid and it’s like, well this guy’s works for Jared, he’s not going to do anything

Toni: Right, right

Matt: You know, to Claire. And if he tried anything uh, Jamie would throw up and then run over there and save her

Toni: (laughing) Yeah, exactly

[17:26] Matt: Oh, Mr. Willoughby again

Toni: This is kind of a big episode for Willoughby

Matt: It is. You know and, from the book Willoughby to our Willoughby it’s uh, there’s a, there’s a, we’ve changed the character. I mean there’s no doubt that, that going forward he’s, he’s just a different person than um, than the books.

Toni: Yeah

Matt: And I think it’s, once again, we don’t have the real estate that the books have to tell some of these stories so we have to truncate, we have to adjust

Toni: Yeah, we condense things and also some things that you read, it’s different when you’re picturing them. When you see, when you see it, visually, has a different impact than when you read it and your mind fills things in. So we had to take that into consideration

Matt: Well, and, and also, I think one of the biggest things that we have to contend with is when you’re in Claire’s head and she can look away from something and you don’t, you don’t have to, you know when you’re reading it, you don’t have to see how Jamie feels or you don’t have to see what’s on his face or in his mind

Toni: Right

Matt: And you don’t get his in, inner thoughts. So when we’re showing something uh, and you, you, you’re pointing a camera at Sam and you go, “Oh, wait, he needs something to react to.” He needs, he needs an emotion, he needs to do this. And in the books sometimes that’s, you know, Claire’s alone so you don’t know that. But we follow Jamie often, without Claire there so you have to give him those moments where, like in episode eight he talked about his um, the secret he held. And then, and then in episode, you know, in episode seven he does the same thing where he’s talking about, you know, something that, when you’re with Claire in the book you don’t see that happening. So it’s easy to jump to the point of, of, uh, you know, finding out about Laoghaire in episode eight and it’s a complete surprise, which it was to me when I first read it, but Diana carefully crafts that in the book to leave it a surprise. We don’t have that luxury because we have to actually put a camera on Jamie and show him

Toni: Right, that’s right. That’s a good point.

(silence)

[19:55] Toni: (chuckling) I love, I love how Marsali and Claire have this little rivalry. I love when she said, “The whore should have the bigger bed,” (chuckling) in the last scene.

Matt: Yeah. It was a little more contentious in the first draft too, I mean, it was, we, there was much more story uh, um, all, all, we also run against, run, you know, run up against how much we can film. If you think about um, uh, script pages and the time it takes to film things, we have twelve days per episode and if you have sixty pages or sixty five pages of script, you know, that gets into five pages, six pages a day and that is a ton of work for, not only the actors, but the crew and uh, the, the uh, directors, the producers on set, you know, you’re trying to fill those, you know, you have to, you have to make your day and, and it gets really hard so we, we have to limit ourselves because we’re a show that doesn’t race through dialogue. We let, we let our actors, we allow them to perform at their pace. We let, we let, if a scene needs to breathe it breathes. If it, if it’s paced up that’s because it, that’s what the scene calls for. We don’t artificially um, we, you know, pace, pace the show. And uh, we found early on in season one when we, I remember turning in sixty five, sixty six page scripts and uh, when we got to production it was like (screeching noise) hold on a second

Toni: That’s not gonna fly

Matt: Not gonna fly. I mean the ultimate goal is to never have any deleted scenes but, you know

Toni: Right. Sometimes you do but we’ve shot even forty two page scripts. I think our shortest script might have been forty two pages?

Matt: Yeah, forty two

Toni: And still it was…

Matt: Made time

Toni: ..it was not short. It, it, we had enough to make an episode. And the whole time people were nervous, “Oh my god, we’re gonna,” cause the worst thing you, you can always cut stuff but it’s very hard to go back and add a scene if an episode is short. So the goal is always like, “Let’s have a little, let’s go a little over so we can just trim if we need to,” but to have to go back and go, “God, we have to think of another scene and go shoot it.” I think that only happened one time, maybe it was in last

Matt: Uh, seven

Toni: It was in the, it was in episode seven

Matt: Yeah

Toni: That we went back and grabbed a scene that was in the original script and got cut, yeah

Matt: It was already in the script and, and we just couldn’t film it in, in Scotland so we actually filmed it in uh, South Africa and we put it, put it, so it was already, it was, it was in the story and it worked. It wasn’t something we were just adding from uh, nowhere. (coughs) Excuse me

[22:39] Toni: I love Claire’s ponytail. I, I just love her look on these ship episodes. She looks fantastic. Uh, I don’t know who came up with the ponytail, if it was Annie or Anita, Wendy, all of our hair and make, makeup people did such a great job uh, because these characters have a totally different look on the ships and, and Cait looks great like that.

Matt:  Yeah it, I remember um, you know, going through the looks, you know, picking out the, the looks that um, we were gonna go for um, obviously there’s a collaboration between hair and makeup and uh, costume and, and the producers. And even, even Cait and um, uh, Caitriona and Sam uh

Toni: Yeah. I know we researched uh, songs for them to be singing and we, you know, went through a lot of different sea shanties. (laughing) Most of them are pretty dirty, actually. They have some uh, very wicked lyrics. I’m not sure if this is the lobster song?

Matt: It, I think it, I think it was and, and…

Toni: There was one called “The Lobster Song,” it was pretty... (chuckles)

Matt: ...the thing about it, you know, Claire, she’s very resilient, she’s been around alot of men in her

Toni: Yeah, she doesn’t phase her

Matt: Yeah. We did a lot of tests on these, too, the acupuncture.

Toni: Oh yeah, yeah

Matt: We were, we were testing (laughing) we tested these, we test everything. That’s the thing about our show is when you see it, when it finally makes the screen, we’ve tested things a million times

Toni: Oh yeah, we get pictures, we had pictures of Jamie’s face in various stages of needleage. Some that were a ton of needles in one and maybe not enough needles and they kept adjusting til it was like, this is the exact number of needles that doesn’t look, it looks just funny enough but not too ridiculous. Um

Matt: Yeah. And also the, um, the size of the needles

Toni: Yeah, back then they were larger, right?

Matt: So now, they were much larger back then than they were today

Toni: Yeah, today’s acupuncture they’re tiny, but

Matt: So we, those are, those are actually period correct uh, acu, acupuncture needles

Toni: Yeah. I don’t know if I’d want those in me. (laughing) Those look like toothpicks

Matt: So those were the… Yeah, it looks like a ten gauge needle (laughs)

Toni: (laughing) Yeah, that’s a ten gauge

[24:50] Matt: So then they pull it out for the tetanus shot and it looks like you’re pinky. Like, “whoa, whoa,” that rusty nail, it wasn’t rusty. (both laugh)

Toni: Well it’s sweet that Jamie didn’t want to hurt her feelings so she pretended that, you know, her tea was uh, curing his seasickness but really, you know, it’s like dueling healers because uh, Willoughby has sort of been his, his healer, you know, these last few years that he knew, that he’s known Willoughby um, he’s done a lot of things and sort of taken Claire’s place and uh, he doesn’t want her to feel back when she comes back

Matt: I also like that Claire and Jamie are getting back to being Claire and Jamie here, there’s, you know

Toni: Yeah, they're being sweet and affectionate here uh, playful

Matt: Playful, there’s jokes, you know. So, so this uh, the doldrums. Um, very difficult to do actually, you,  you’d think moving was the, the most difficult but what we did when filming is uh, we’re, we, you know, this, this ship is outside and you’re trying to portray that you’re in the doldrums so there’s no wind but we have sails so even a slight breeze hits the sails and it’s, you would think, “Well how come they're not moving?” So we had to be very specific in the time of day we filmed these scenes so it was very early in the morning when the wind was nil, basically, and then as soon as the wind picked up then we moved inside and we filmed other, other scenes

Toni: Right. Because it’s very windy in South Africa is, isn’t it?

Matt: It, well it is where they built the, the studio, it was called Wind Alley and you’re like, “Uh oh”

Toni: Ugh, yeah

Matt: And then we write a story called “Doldrums” and you’re like, “Well that’s, that’s not…”

Toni: (laughing) Yeah! Well I don’t think doldrums was in the book. I, I, I think we added this as, you know, we, it was also supposed to be a little bit of a metaphor for where the relationship is at the moment because they just came through this crisis with Laoghaire and you know, leaving Lallybroch and the kidnapping and they’re not fully back on track yet, they’re in a little bit of a limbo um, and so by the time, by the end they get through it and the ship gets through it um, and that was the idea behind this episode. This is a really nice scene coming up here, I love, I love this um

Matt: Well this is uh, in, in the sense of the doldrums um, you’re still sailing, you’re still, you’re still uh, if you’re, if you’re comparing it to their relationship, once again, I think, once she put her foot on that ship, you know, she put thoughts and ever, ever not being, you know, I mean, not, not that I’ve, I, I believed that she wasn’t ever going to be with him, I don’t believe that for a second

Toni: Right. No, no, of course not

Matt: It, it, this, they’re, they’re, they fit again. Look at the, there’s, there’s that, that, they fit with each other perfectly and, and they just had to um, reestablish, I think that’s the word that I would put on this is reestablish their relationship. Not, not see if it, if it works, just, “Hey, let’s get, get rolling again.”

[28:08] Toni: Yeah. This is

Matt: Yeah, I love this scene

Toni: This is um, and, this poem is awesome. Poem. The line she’s saying from this children’s book I was really shocked um, when um, it was in the script because Goodnight Moonis a very very popular kids’ book uh, nowadays and I was like, “Wait a minute, that’s like themost popular kids' book, I’m sure, how could it have existed back then?” But apparently it was around in the ‘60s um, it went all, I didnt realize it had been written so long ago um, and I thought, “We can’t use this, it sounds so modern,” because every parent knows this book. Um, but it was and we used it and I think, I believe we, we payed to use it but, it’s those three iconic lines, “Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. Goodnight light and the red balloon.” And um, I think it was a little more expensive to get three lines, but I was like, “Well you have to have the three lines so you’ll really recognize the book,” um

Matt: Well, cause you could say, “Goodnight moon,” that’s

Toni: You could just go, “Goodnight moon,” and you might think she’s just saying goodnight to the moon but, but once you hear the first three lines you, you recognize the book and it’s really sweet that she’s talking about Brianna here um, you know, we had always planned for you know, not to obviously drop the Brianna thread that, that in, in almost every episode Jamie uh, asks something about Brianna or Claire brings her up because she misses her and this is their child so I, I love the scenes where they do talk about Brianna.

(silence)

[29:56] Matt: We, we spliced some of these together with actual ocean shots so the, and, and then (coughs) once again um, uh, with, with some visual effects. We did have a lot of sun there which was amazing. When we first got to South Africa it was very very hot cause we arrived in their summer and we, we went from the winter in Scotland to the summer in South Africa and um, many of the Scottish crew were loving life for the first couple weeks until um, uh, that, it got, you know, it was relentless, it was so hot for so long that they started to, you know, uh, suffer a little bit. Um, I think uh, Caitriona and Sam loved it at first, you know, soaking in all those vita, the vitamin D

Toni: Right (laughs)

Matt:  But after awhile it starts to get, you know, you're working in these hot temperatures it’s, you’re going from one extreme to the other so, you know, working in cold, wet, and mud is, is tough but then you go working in, you know, heat, no wind, you, you know, all day long, thirteen hours of daylight you know, so it really, it really became um, uh, the two extremes in, in, in such a short period of time

Toni: Right.

Matt: I think this was one of those uh, moments where um, we had Claire in a scene with the captain alone and then we put Jamie into this scene

Toni: Right

Matt: And it ramps it up a little bit, it ramps up um, the tension. I think Jamie likes potatoes, I didn’t know that

Toni: (laughs) Again that’s an Irish thing. Yeah that’s, it, it’s, it an, an interesting difference between the two ships um, that this is not, this is not a military ship so the captain’s making the point that it’s a merchant ship and he can’t discipline the men like you would on a military ship um, so when they have a problem like this it’s a very serious because if the men are convinced that there’s bad luck or a Jonah, a guy who’s, has uh, you know, disrespected the traditions of the ship um, it can cause, they believe that it causes something like the doldrums and the captain is a little bit, his hands are tied. If there’s gonna be a mutiny it’s something where they often do, you know, throw someone overboard to bring back their, their good luck. So it was a very serious thing. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, you know, comedic at all, it wasn’t some funny thing, it was uh, a real thing people believed back then

Matt: Well, look, I mean people uh, Friday the thirteenth, don’t walk under a ladder, black cats, knock on wood, you know, I could name twenty of them, you know, I have all kinds of superstitions about baseball

Toni: Oh, yeah

Matt: I, I’ll only eat certain meals when the Dodgers are playing (Toni laughs) you know, it’s, it’s, I’m very particular.

Toni: Yeah, I have um, a lucky riding shirt

Matt: See?

Toni: That I wear, yeah

Matt: Yeah.

Toni: And certain types of pens and pencils of certain colors so, it’s, it’s, we have superstitions, yeah

Matt: There you go! See? So it, you know, I bet there’s, you know, all the fans right now are trying to think of theirs right now the, the, the things that they do but, you know

Toni: Everybody has a little thing, maybe ki, you know, uh, kiss your, kiss your hand and touch the side of the plane as you’re going onto an airplane, uh..

Matt: I always put my left shoe on first

Toni: (laughing) Did you?

Matt: Always. I know that

Toni: Yeah, well, it’s not so different

Matt: No

Toni: Touching the horseshoe from, you know, a lot of the superstitions that people have these days.

Matt: So what we did here, when we filmed this, is it’s filmed in two parts. We do, we do, when we do stunts we always, we often do um, things in, in a couple parts. We, we, we section them out so if you think back to the print shop um, fire uh, Sam actually did jump over the railing but we built um, a platform and we put a padding so he jumped halfway down and landed and then we did the second part, what we did is he jumped uh, onto the floor from up, from the same platform but just onto the floor that was out of, off, off camera. So he only had to make, you know, to jump halfway each time. Um, this particular mast is um, is stuck in the ground, it’s not on the ship and it is um, only, well, as I say only, it’s, it’s, you know, uh, about half the, half the height up. So it’s, it’s not, you know, seventy feet up it’s, it’s only about thirty feet off the ground, which would still be um, a, a pretty horrible fall um, but uh, Sam and James were both up there, they were strapped in. We, we, we do take those elements out in um, post. But um, you know, they do have to get up there and balance and do everything um, and they, they did a great job. I don’t think either one of them ever slipped and fell off. Not, not unless it was part of the story and this, so that, that’s green, we had green screens underneath

Toni: There were even green all around these guys instead of blue. You wouldn’t have seen the water and like, when he fall, when he’s dangling here, I remember actually in the editing room I believe there was a little bit of talk of, of cutting this scene because we were long at one point and we were like, “Eh, maybe, do we need this to go this far?” But that's cause we were looking at it with the green screen and it wasn’t quite as exciting. And then um, I’m really glad we kept it ob, obviously, because once we saw it with the water we were like, “Holy sh, you know, he’s dangling over the, the ocean,” and it, it just helps, when you see it, the scene as it’s meant to be it has a whole different feel and it has a whole lot more tension

Matt: Well yeah, they’re, they’re uh, you know high, and then you have the, also the, the hull length so when he hits the water but he could’ve, he would’ve landed on that gunnel...

Toni: Ugh, yeah

Matt: ...and it would’ve snapped him in two. So really, not landing on the water it… So right now what we’re playing is that obviously people are watching this episode or watch this episode realize that there’s not a pelican

Toni: Yeah we, we wanted to do the pelican, we love it in the book, it, and we did look for pelicans. We made a, we made a really good effort um

Matt: We looked for pelicans. We, we searched high and low for a pelican that could even remotely play um, Ping

Toni: Yeah. And we thought of just having one in a cage, you know, in the book obviously the pelican is trained and flies and gathers fish which would have been pretty impossible. We even thought, “Could we just have one in a cage that he feeds, you know, and they, and they keep on deck,” just to, you know, give a nod to the pelican but ultimately we, we decided that we couldn’t do it the whole, the whole way, we didn’t wanna

Matt: Well it’d just be, it’d become, once again, it’s always a balance between time and cost and what you want to put on, on camera and, and we know there’s a lot of these elements in the book and, and they play very well, you know, they, they seamlessly fit into a book but they um, and we spent hours and, and, and actually days you know, effort spending, you know, can we do a vis, a visual effect pelican? But the, the, the cost

Toni: Yeah, we tried to fake it, fake it with a,  yeah

Matt: And, and it wasn’t, there, there’s nothing fake about that, that was, you know, we would’ve had to, to draw one, all the interaction between human and animal was massive so uh, it just takes, it takes a lot of effort

Toni: That’s what it is. You can get a stock shot of something like the bird that uh, Willoughby just sees flying a little while ago, that’s a stock shot of a bird flying over the ocean. But if the bird is going to interact with our actors the cost for visual effects are, are huge so it’s a, you know and really at the heart of this, this story and this scene is right here is this character of Willoughby and that, you know, he, like Claire, is an outsider and he’s been you know, he writes on the deck, he tells Claire he’s writing his story but he, he’s not ready to tell it yet. And here he sort of sacrifices himself in a way because he tells his story which he’d been keeping inside as a way to save Hayes who is also an outsider here because Hayes is not a sailor and he’s terrified to be on the ship and he’s, he almost committed suicide over, you know, being the Jonah

[38:48] Matt: But I, I, I think, I think he’s, he’s very, he’s being clever here, is that he is, if you saw, you know, you saw the first time he was writing his story and it, it dried off very quickly. He knew no one would read it it would just dry up very quickly. This time he went back and he was checking something. He saw it and it lingered, it stayed…

Toni: It meant that there was moisture, right?

Matt: ...and then he saw the albatross, he saw the albatross flying very low and, and what he, he calculated in those beats were, “Hey, the air is changing and while everybody is distracted I’m going to, I’m going to buy some time here. But I’m going to buy it by telling my story. And I’m going to sacrifice my story to distract all these people away from Hayes, away from their, their hate,” and um, and he, he just turns the tide here, he really turns the tide. Knowing something’s coming. He knows something’s coming and, and it’s, it’s the weather’s coming

Toni: Right, yeah. And um, Gary did such a wonderful job here, the actor. He, this is a very long monologue and actually this is probably half of what the monologue is in the book and we, he had learned the whole thing and we, but he, it’s a really emotional, it’s really raw and it get, it gets to these guys. I mean, to get to these hardened sailors um, it had to be emotional and something that would captivate them in the moment

Matt: Well I, I always think that these guys, you know they wouldn’t be on this ship if they didn’t have a hard luck story.

Toni: Yeah

Matt: This is not their first choice of career

Toni: Right

Matt: You know they’re, they’re, they’re put here for a reason and I think that, that uh, you know, whatever bad luck brought them here or happenstance brought them here that they relate to him and they’re like, “Yeah that, that’s my life too. There’s a little bit of my life in there. That I was done wrong and now I’m on this ship,” so when, when he tells that story I think there’s some empathy and they can relate to it.

Toni: Right. Now it looks here like he might jump, but I love this shot, I love how he just throws the papers

Matt: And this was practical

Toni: It’s fantastic

Matt: That’s practical. We added a couple more pages in visual effect, but...

Toni: He had a big wind machine, right? Did you have a…?

Matt: ...yeah but they really did that and, and it really um, you know, we, we, uh, Gary threw the papers and

Toni: And they, yeah

Matt: So that’s what, that’s what uh, Willoughby knew. He knew that, he knew this was coming and he was trying to delay it.

Toni: Yeah. Now he’s like, “Whew! My hunch paid off, thank god,” or they would’ve thrown him over (laughs). And Hayes is very grateful to him. Claire’s all, “How did you know that?” She knows there’s gotta be a little science behind this and….

(silence)

[42:05] Matt: There we keep up with uh, Claire always calls uh, Mr. Willoughby by his given name

Toni: Mm hmm

Matt: And um, she under, you know, kind of understands how he feels in being kind of an outlander or, you know, him, they’re both outlanders

Toni: Yeah, absolutely

Matt: So what we do here is, we put blue screens around when we’re gonna do weather and um, those are real wind and rain machines so that’s real water, the actors are really getting soaked, yeah

Toni: Yeah, everyone’s getting really wet, yeah (laughs)

Matt: There’s no, no faking that.

Toni: At least it’s not freezing, like in Scotland

Matt: It wasn’t freezing, that’s the, the best part of it

Toni: And Claire and Jamie, yeah

Matt: And I think this is a great moment because we, you know, there’s, there’s some joy, even though, even though, uh, Young Ian’s still missing this is something

Toni: They’re reconnecting here

Matt: Well and something doesn’t, you know, the pace of our show is different. When people are like, “Oh you gotta get them there fast,” we’re like, “Well they can only go as fast,” and I say this in the writer’s room a lot, um, “We can only go as fast as a horse or the wind.”

Toni: (laughing) That’s right

Matt: And that’s our rule in the writer’s room uh, along with uh, “It’s not okay to say okay.”

Toni: Yeah, they did not say, “Okay,” back in the eighteenth century

Matt: (laughing) Yeah

Toni: I know in the beginning when we were writing scripts you loved to do the global search for “okay” and, and you deighted a little too much in saying, “I found seven okays in this script! Nobody said, ‘Okay,’ in the eighteenth century.” But it’s true, they did not. I mean they didn’t talk like that and if you, you know I’ve seen shows where they don’t pay attention to things like that and, maybe you don’t know why it doesn’t resonate or sound right but it just doesn’t capture you and, and it’s because, if you're not authentic on some of these things, you know, there’s just a, a, you know, a feeling to the show where you’re like, “This isn’t set, this doesn’t sound quite right, I can’t, I don’t know why,” but this one does. People feel like they’re in this time

Matt: Well I think we, I think we say, you know, I mean, I say that not as, just, solely for, you know, the word okay but it’s, it’s more of a, “Hey, when, when you’re writing your scripts pay attention to the modernisms, pay attention to something that you might say now if you’re, you know, if you're not taking the, the dialogue uh, from, you know, from the book.”

Toni: Yeah, yeah. I, I like that they reconnected here um, cause I think, you know, the, the Laoghaire thing was a big, a big thing to get past um, and although they’ve been playful on the ship and reconnecting this is where they really um, they’re over that, they’re over that hump now and

Matt: That’s, that’s, that’s what it is, just a small, very low speed bump

Toni: Yeah

Matt: Now. Now the military ship comes in, Toni Graphia

Toni: (laughing) Well, you said there were no spoilers on the podcast because everybody watching the podcast has already seen it

Matt: I know, I know. I know, but some people, I know, but it’s weird, some people actually watch it at the same time, I don’t, I don’t

Toni: I know, I, I said, “the two ships,” earlier and I got a look from Mr. Roberts and I was like, “Oh, that’s right, the other ship isn’t here yet.” (laughs) But here it is, here it is

Matt: So it, that was just for the people who, who, I assume they have seen, you know, all the way through seven and eight but I didn’t, I didn’t know, some people watch it at the same time. But you know, I guess we can’t compete with that

Toni: Well here’s our other ship and explain go them about this ship and what’s different about it, this is a military man-o-war

Matt: This is, this is uh, the HMS Porpoise is a seventy four gun man-o-war, ship of the line and we have the, we had this ship also um, in South Africa. It didn’t move, though. The Artemis actually had wheels and we could drive it around, we would drive it over, we had a lagoon and a tank and, and so we could, we could move the Artemis. But uh, the Porpoise, which is, you can see how massive it is, it’s huge

Toni: Wow, that’s mass, that’s a great shot

Matt: And um, it, it couldn’t move it was, it was a stationary um, cause it was just too big and too uh, heavy. Um, built all out of wood and very, actual a replica of a man-o-war

Toni: Yeah, it's pretty impressive

[46:40] Matt: So um, we had to, you know, in a ship that doesn’t move, you have to pick the time of days you film because where the sun lands it’s, it’s, it’s permanent whereas the Artemis

Toni: Ahh, that’s what it is, yeah you can’t change it

Matt: The Artemis, we could move it, you know, around and, and adjust for the sun because uh, we like to backlight everything if, I don’t know if you notice but we, we do keep almost everything in backlight and you know, there’s, even though there’s front light on them there are, when you’re outside you like to keep backlight cause it can control, see how the backlight? You, you can control, you can control the light on the subject much better that way. And it makes people look really pretty

[47:24] Toni: Yeah. Well these, these guys, they’re not too shabby

Matt: No. Well, I mean, in any light they’re pretty good looking, so (chuckles)

Toni: Yeah. But that’s interesting, I didn’t know that the other ship, the bigger ship didn’t move. I, I remember getting pictures of the Artemis and thinking how funny it looked in a parking lot, you know, with cars parked all around it. It’s dry docked, you know, uh, and, and just the magic that we can do with the, the special effects. I almost hate to tell it, tell people how we do it cause, I don’t know, if I was a viewer I’d be like, “Don’t tell me it’s all fake because I wanna pic, I wanna believe it’s real,” because when you’re watching it it does feel so real, you really

Matt: Well that’s what, that’s why, I think it’s, you’re, you’re, you’re explaining to people how we do it they can, after they watch it they, they believe it’s real and that means that they’re, the craftsmen that we have working for us are doing such a good job

Toni: They’re excellent, yeah

Matt: That, and, and you, you, you, to, to explain the amount of detail and the talk and the discussion about the, the, the

Toni: Oh yeah, endless meetings and, and attention to detail it’s amaze, you know

Matt: Oh about the, the details on the water, if the light’s bright, if the, if the waves are the right, if they’re the right height, if the horizon’s tiling the right direction

Toni: Oh, oh yeah

Matt: All those little subtle things, we are in endless meetings…

Toni: Endless

Matt: ...about because we want it to be exactly, the best we can possibly make it when it hits the air

Toni: Yeah. I remember in the playback for one of these ship episodes and at playback when we watch the final version and we have like, maybe ten people in the room and we’re watching it for every little detail. At one point it was like, “Wait, stop, hold the print,” and, and one of the post production um, supervisor women ran to the front and she goes, “Look! This ship has a shadow going this way and the ship next to it the shadow goes the other way!” So the shadows were wrong and I, I was like, “Ha! I didn’t, I didn’t notice that.” That’s not the kind of detail that I would be tuned into. I’m listening to dialogue and other stuff but we have an expert on every single thing so that they catch things like that and we corrected it because there are audience members that would have noticed that

Matt: Now you can see the size difference here when Claire steps onto the Porpoise and there, you know, the gunnels are twice as high. You can see the beam which is across is

Toni: The gunnels are the sides of the ships the, the

Matt: Right. The, the, the railings and stuff

Toni: The railings, yeah

Matt: So now she is down in the uh, on the gun deck. But you could, you could just get the sense of how big this, so she’s gone down two decks. Now the Artemis only had uh, three decks. The main deck, the hold and then um, the bilge. This has, you know, essentially five decks, um

Toni: Yeah, and here’s where um, people are suffering from typhoid and uh, Claire’s gone over to, to help them and this, this must have been a fun (chuckles) scene to dress because of the

Matt: Well, this was, this was actually uh, this was the first thing we shot when we were in South Africa

Toni: Oh

Matt: So, day one was down here and what was funny is that they, they made, they made artificial um, vomit.

Toni: Ugh

Matt: And the artificial vomit, I don’t know what they used, but, it made people retch. It was horrible, it stunk, it was, it was actually worse...

Toni: Ugh, method acting

Matt: ...it was worse than real vomit. And we, we were, we were all laughing about it because it was, it was difficult being down in there. Now, it was nice that the stages were air conditioning, or air conditioned so we had that running constantly to help but um, yeah, it was uh

Toni: Yeah, that, it looks as nasty as it was

Matt: I don’t think they intentionally made it to stink but they, whatever they, they used definitely didn’t help. The lighting is always uh, one of the most difficult things on, on our show because we have um, you know, fire, we, we light by candlelight or lantern and um, you want to keep it authentic but you also want to be able to see the actors um, and, and any element that you’re looking at, so that would be um

Toni: This is gorgeous lighting, yeah

Matt: The red marks and stuff. You can see the difference in size of one cabin, the captain’s quarters on the Artemis compared to the captain’s quarters on, on uh, the Porpoise is twice as big.

Toni: Yeah

[52:37] Matt: Yeah this was uh, um, these decks were also, the, the Porpoise decks were built um, on stages as well so uh, except for the first two decks. Um, and uh, those were, those were out in the, on the, the main ship. So uh, Gary and his team, uh, Gary Steele our production designer uh, you know, built these um, sets uh, on the, we have five, four stages actually, four stages um, and three ships. Um, actually four ships, to tell you the truth, we had another little um, another little one that we can move around.

Toni: There we’re meeting um, Elias Pound

Matt: Elias Pound

Toni: Um, Claire’s shocked at how young he is cause, you know, they had kids on these ships as young as like, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old even, even younger

Matt: Oh, younger than that they called the, they would call them powder monkeys, they were the ones that would bring the powder to the guns. Some of them were very young.

Toni: Yeah it’s

Matt: Mr. Briscoe we gave uh, Mr. Briscoe uh, Richard Briscoe is our visual effects supervisor and he works so hard on all these ship eps uh, so every now and then we like to pray, pay uh, tribute to uh, the people who work so hard on the show

Toni: Yeah, he, he had a real task for him with these ship episodes, I think, I’m sure that was one of the more challenging things in our three seasons

Matt: Yeah, I think season two it was Versailles, doing Versailles right and then this season, obviously, it’s the ships and just getting all the details because some of the things you think are, like Versailles in a way was much much easier because it’s a building. It doesn’t move

Toni: Yeah, this…

Matt: When the wind hits it it doesn’t affect it but when you have ships you have sails you have ocean you have sky, all needing um, a hard surface. So the, as the ship cuts through the, the water, the water does something and, and, and the viewer’s eye just knows what it should do. When it’s off, you know it’s off, so you have to

Toni:  You know it’s off. Even if you can’t figure out why it’s off it look, it looks weird to you. And now of course they’re, they’re uh, leaving with, with Claire aboard and again she and Jamie are separated, being separated.

Matt: Yeah this, they, they, they cannot, you know, as, as luck would have it, you know, they, they can’t buy good luck. Anyway um, that is episode um, 309

Toni: 309

Matt: “The Doldrums.” And uh, until next time, I’m, I’m Matt Roberts and uh, I think that lady over there is Toni Graphia

Toni: Toni and I, you know, comes, stay on the voyage with us. We will be on it till the end, till the bitter end. Ahoy.

Transcribed 1/9/18 by Shelsy J.