Outlander's Tobias Menzies on Black Jack’s brother and the Things You Do for Love!
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Outlander Season 2 - Out of Character London PR Shoot Photo: Jim Marks
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In the last year alone, Tobias Menzies has played five very different characters, two of which are on the same show. On Outlander, he stars as Frank Randall in 1945, who suffers the loss of his wife, Claire, when she accidentally travels back in time to the 18th century, and Black Jack Randall, Frank's assumed ancestor in the past, who torments Claire and her new husband Jamie whenever they cross paths. Although one is ostensibly good and mild-mannered, and the other veers toward villainy and sadism, Menzies manages to find their common ground and make them incredibly distinct, without the usual crutches of say, an accent, a limp, or anything too obvious. During a recent visit to New York, Menzies chatted with Vulture about a pivotal trip to the bathroom, confronting two different Jamies, and why he decided not to cry during a death scene.
I heard a story about how you first decided to become an actor, and it involved a trip to the bathroom?
[Laughs.] Yeah, really early on, when I was young, we went and saw a production of The Wind in the Willows in a theater. At the intermission, I went to the toilet, and in the urinal next to me was the actor playing Badger. I didn't quite know why he was in the urinal meant for the audience, and not backstage, I'm not quite sure about that, but there was something thrilling about seeing someone I had looked up to on the stage, and then seeing him beside me having a piss. There was something really about that which stayed with me. It seemed a little bit of magic in a way, this sort of mythical figure breaking through and just being there. And that was the first time I engaged with the idea of wanting to be an actor, and also being a person.
It seems fitting for the kinds of characters you’re attracted to, in which you take these people and really humanize them, warts and all.
That's what's interesting about humans, that we're always a massive contradiction. There's a lot more to everyone, isn't there? What I'm interested in doing is making the character more three-dimensional, big or small, because that's what's both great and infuriating about people. Everyone has a family. Everyone comes from somewhere. So it's harder to demonize someone when you see them with their family, as you do with Black Jack in this most recent episode. You have to engage with Jack the sibling, which is always complicated. That's one of the benefits of doing a television drama over a long period of time — you get to explore these little contradictions. And one of the benefits of doing the TV show from the books is we can fill in the gaps, and color in more of the characters around Claire, and that's particularly true of Frank.
We might not have thought we'd get to see a tender side of Jack, just as we might not have thought we'd get to see a more violent side of Frank. But perhaps these men have a few things in common. Do you approach them differently?
Not massively. There are a few physicality things that are different with Jack. Frank is closer to my own physicality. It's mainly instinctive, really. I suppose it's gotten more instinctive the more I've done it, and I've been doing it for a couple of years now. But I never regarded Black Jack as someone who didn't have tender feelings somewhere. My main thought was that I was keen for him to not be so confident. In the first season, we saw someone with an absolute self-belief, that arrogance, that belief that he's indestructible. But since then, in different ways, and in much lesser ways, he's still affected by what happened at Wentworth Prison at the end of season one. We only had a couple of chances to convey that, starting with Jamie and Claire in Versailles, and then with his brother. But these scenes speak to somebody who is a little more lost, a little bit away from his comfort zone, away from his natural territory and strength. And that felt like an interesting development, rather than have him be unaffected at all.
You talked to author Diana Gabaldon for guidance on how to portray that, correct?
Yes. Her main point was that Alex is probably the most important relationship in Jack's life. It's not what you usually see or would imagine that he has in his life. It's someone whose good opinion he values, and that only helps to enrich the person we think we know. So with Alex's imminent death, and then his demise, it challenges everything for Jack, and brings all of that up to the surface.
And just as we've started to see this tender side of Jack, his violence emerges again with Alex's death. His reaction is odd, to say the least...
It's perhaps the biggest change from the books, for him. And originally in the script, it was written that Jack wept. He was just full of emotion. But we've all seen the scene where a brother cries at the bedside of his loved one, and that didn't seem quite keeping with the character of Jack. And we could see that he was emotional about his brother passing. So we decided to skip the crying, and have him physically attack the body of his brother. It had to be something odder, something weirder, something more violent. It's a weird expression of his love: If you abandon me, I will destroy you. And it felt surprising. It's the last thing you'd expect, but it's also keeping with the character.
Frank, Black Jack, and even Edmure Tully, who you play on Game of Thrones, are all very different characters, and you give each of them a complete sense of self. But it seemed like all three were placed in these positions that they didn't want to be in, where they had to make a difficult choice, and they ultimately chose the person they loved over themselves. Frank takes back Claire and agrees to raise another man's child. Black Jack gives up military intel and marries Mary for his brother's sake. And Edmure gives up Riverrun to protect his infant son, even though he's never met him.
All three of them, yeah, it's a theme — the things you do for love. We talked quite a bit about Black Jack's betrayal of the British army, of his battalion, that he gives their secrets to Claire. I was worried that it seemed too easy of a choice to make. Whatever you might think of Black Jack's morality, I think he is a loyal soldier, a loyal subject. He wrestles with that, even though we don't see it. He's in disguise, because these two armies are very close to each other around Inverness. And he feels vulnerable around Claire because of his concern for his brother. I don't think he enjoys having to ask her to aid his brother, but it's his only choice. We both need each other, and distrust each other. And Alex is so important in his life, he's willing to make that bargain. There was a lot to play with there.
With Edmure in Thrones, you could almost argue that it's an expression of self-love. Self-protection. Self-preservation. He feels much more cowardly in that decision, and obviously he doesn't want to lose his family, his people, his castle, but that character is less about the expression of love than Frank is. Jack, love is very weird for him. But they are all different facets of, What are you made of, in extreme situations? When the shit hits the fan, which way do you go? And why? They certainly all have that in common, that larger theme of love and betrayal, cowardice and heroism.
You really feel Edmure is a coward? He seemed prepared to deny Jaime Lannister, until his son became part of the equation. My interpretation was that he betrayed his uncle to save his son. And he's also endured a lot over the years, being a prisoner.
You're right. Thinking back on playing that first half of that scene with Jaime Lannister, he actually has arrived at a place of despair and has resolved himself to die, denying Jaime. He's forced to engage with what that entails, all the ramifications, what would follow from that apparently heroic act of saying, "No." It would result in great suffering. Edmure now, the man we met in these last few episodes, is not the man we met before, the almost comic, buffoonish character of season three. He has changed. And I guess you can't be a hero unless you feel fear. So maybe he's heroically being a coward! There certainly is a moral dimension to the scene with Jaime, the investigation of Jaime's position, to see Edmure wrestling with that larger question. Game of Thrones seems increasingly a meditation on deeply flawed people. I don't think there are many inherently good people. Everyone's been compromised. Everyone's in a position they don't want to be in.
How did you manage to fit in not just Game of Thrones, but also The Night Manager and Catastrophe? You're juggling so many characters at the moment...
It's a good problem to have! Catastrophe, I went to do that, almost as an in-joke. Sharon Horgan is an old friend of mine. We've known each other and worked together for many years. So whenever she calls me up and asks me to do something, I generally do it. She's a brilliant woman, and it's a particularly brilliant show. The Night Manager, I fit in between season one and two of Outlander, and then I did Thrones in the middle of shooting Outlander, in September or October? And I also fit in the new Underworld film in Prague, where I play a vampire.
One day, you're a sadist British redcoat, the next a prisoner of war, the next a vampire...
I had a few different personalities going around my head! Weirdly, I didn't find that hard. I don't know what that says about my psyche. [Laughs.]
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