Sam Heughan on … the Roots of My Peak Challenge

In this Web exclusive, Sam Heughan, star of “Outlander” and recovering distance runner, weighs in on his history of inspiring others to work out.

Jordana Brown by BOX MAGAZINE

Before Outlander, you starred as Bruce Wayne in Batman Live, a touring stage show. Did you also have to train for that role?

Yeah, we very much had a boot camp for that, too, actually. There was a lot of flying involved, so there was a lot of core conditioning. Flying on wires — so it’s just to maintain the position in the air — that’s all about core, really. And then there was a lot of stage combat, lots of krav maga and mixed-martial-arts kinds of things. Stick fighting, as well, and sword fighting. We did a lot of bodyweight training because we had a lot of acrobats with us. A lot of them were British champions or working on Cirque du Soleil and those sort of things, so they were all in there with us, and we just did their kind of workouts. It was all bodyweight. Squats, push-ups, pull-ups were sort of the standard.

The gymnastics feeds into CrossFit, too.

Absolutely, yeah. One thing I really wanted to do was get a handstand. They were teaching me, and I kept working on it, but I have to admit I sort of lost interest. Then I started working on a muscle-up and then that developed into wanting to do 100 pull-ups unbroken. I was working on it for a long time, and I got up to about 40, I think. But then I lost interest in that, too.

It was hard because we were traveling — each week we’d go to a different country. Then I heard of an event called the Marcothon, which for the whole of December every day you have to run either a 5K or 25 minutes, whichever comes first. So I committed to do it for charity, and I managed to encourage about 15 people from the company to do it. A lot of them didn’t really run or they were, like, either actors or acrobats who didn’t run, but they all did it, and every day people were running.

It’s not far to run, but without having a day off, it really begins to fatigue you very quickly and it becomes a mental thing. It was amazing — on Christmas Day we ran all together along the Seine in Paris; we ran in Switzerland in the snow; we ran in Germany. There was one guy who was pretty overweight, an actor who had never done anything physical, and he started doing this and he didn’t stop. Now he’s running — every weekend he runs like 18 miles, 20 miles. He’s gotten into it. But it was great. Exercise brings people together, and I’ve had some great experiences just working out with people and going to hang out. You just get to know people when you share activity.

To read the full interview with Sam Heughan, buy the January/February 2016 issue here.

My Peak Challenge, Sam Heughan’s charitable initiative, raises money for blood-cancer research by encouraging participants to set a fitness goal and offering a full 60-day training and nutrition program to help them meet it. For more information or to join, go to mypeakchallenge.co.uk.

The Globe and Mail

John Doyle: A likeable woman: Caitriona Balfe, Golden Globe nominee for Outlander

The woman is Irish, as am I. Her accent is there, but soft. Unlike mine, which isn’t really there until drink is taken and then is strong, especially when strong views are expressed.

I have strong views on Outlander. The romantic fiction conventions upended in it, the damsel-in-distress made savvy and soundly competent. It’s a powerful excursion into heady themes of love, love of country, sex, sadism and atonement. Outlander, off the radar for many critics, has three Golden Globe nominations, including Best Drama, which is deeply gratifying to the millions who watch and admire it in countless countries around the world.

The Irish woman is Caitriona Balfe, who plays Claire, the canny heroine thrown back in time from the 1940s to the tumult of Scotland in 1743. She is nominated for a Golden Globe on Sunday for Actress in a Drama.

Balfe, age 34, is tall and dark-haired. She sits across from me briefly amused by the fuss the publicist makes about what chair Balfe should sit in. I tell her I won’t keep her long. “Ah, don’t worry,” she says, the rhythm of speech of County Monaghan, where she was born, surfacing in those few words.

She fixes her eyes on me. She looks at me coolly. I know the look. I grew up surrounded by such Irish women, aloof eyes and a stormy heart. Warmth under it, though, the poetry of amusement and passion. She’s the perfect Claire for Outlander.

I ask her what Claire is and what she represents, but do it sideways. Once, I wrote that Claire is a true super-heroine. Diana Gabaldon, who wrote the Outlander books, wrote to me to say, “Mr. Doyle, she’s not a super-heroine, she’s just a very competent woman.”

Balfe says this is true. “To be a super-heroine means having superpowers. Claire has no special power, she is intelligent and able to adapt to situations that befall her. She is a woman of the 1940s, when the war meant that women had jobs they had not been entrusted with before, and able to leave the home. She’s seen a lot, was a nurse in wartime, and she’s strong in any situation.”

I ask if any of the history, in which Outlander is steeped, surprised her. “What surprised me was how advanced they were in the eighteenth century. We think technology has changed everything, made us sophisticated, but people are remarkable in their ingenuity. Sometimes when we think of our ancestors and what they went through, we assume they had a different emotional make-up or thought process, to handle things. But they didn’t. Family structure and family dynamic hasn’t changed. Love hasn’t changed.”

“I was surprised by some the details and events of Scottish history. I grew up not knowing about it. In Ireland we learn a lot about Irish and European history, not about Scotland. Its history is astonishing; it’s bloody and full of heartbreak. You just can’t help but be moved by it.”

Does her Irish background inform her work as Claire? “Everything that I absorbed through my life informs my work. But obviously being a Celt and spending much of my childhood in the countryside, when we started filming in Scotland it felt like a homecoming. Sam [Sam Heughan, who plays Jamie, her lover and then husband in 18th century Scotland] and I have talked about this. Sometimes, you simply have to look at the landscape, to be in it, to feel a kinship with the history. Claire is an Englishwoman who finds her home and heart in Scotland.”

My time with Balfe together is brief so it’s necessary ask bluntly about the Golden Globe nominations and what it means for her and for Outlander?

Another one of those very direct, cool looks as she answers, but with a billow of amusement: “For me, it’s kind of wild,” she says, laughing gently. “Before this I had five or six acting credits to my name. Two of which I didn’t even speak in. It’s a personal milestone, you might say. It puts me in a place when I have more opportunity, and it comes from this wonderful opportunity.”

“For the show, for everyone involved from the crew in Scotland to Diana, to everyone, it brings more attention, something Outlander deserves.”

We finish, but there is a lovely, illuminating postscript. We get up to leave and she says, “Your accent? Where in Ireland are you from?” And I tell her, “Born in Tipperary, lived in Leitrim [which is close to Monaghan], grew up in Dublin.”

She beams. ”Oh, Leitrim! Poor, lovely Leitrim.” And she adds, “I grew up in Monaghan.” As if I wouldn’t know that.

I ask her if all Monaghan people are devotees of Patrick Kavanagh, the great Irish poet from that area, and who write so much about it. “Kavanagh!” she exclaims. “I grew up with Kavanagh drummed into me.” And then she recites: “O stony grey soil of Monaghan/The laugh from my love you thieved/You took the gay child of my passion/And gave me your clod-conceived.”

She’s beating out the rhythm with her foot, her head thrown back, delight on her face. The publicist is agog, wondering what the hell I’ve just done to Caitriona Balfe. But I know. I grew up surrounded by such women.

Balfe shakes my hand. I thank her. She laughs. Her eyes are merry now. I liked her a lot, as I knew I would.

Caitriona Balfe in her youth.. During her modeling career

Outlander's Caitriona Balfe & Sam Heughan Are All Ready for Golden Globes 2016

By JustJared.com 

What they wore for inquiring minds... 

Outlander stars Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan arrive looking very chic at the 2016 Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday (January 10) in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The 36-year-old actress is up for the Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama award for her work on the show!

FYI: Caitriona is wearing an Alexander McQueen dress, Fred Leighton jewelry, a Christian Louboutin handbag, and Roger Vivier shoes. Sam is wearing a Dunhill tux, a Piaget timepiece, Ileana Makri cufflinks, and Louis Leeman shoes.

http://www.justjared.com/2016/01/10/outlanders-caitriona-balfe-sam-heughan-are-all-ready-for-golden-globes-2016/

Zap2it 

New ‘Outlander’ trailer highlights a change from the book

BY ANDREA REIHER AT 10:01 AM ON JAN 8, 2016

Starz premiered a new trailer for “Outlander” Season 2 at the 2016 TCA winter press tour Friday (Jan. 8), which offers viewers more details on the upcoming season, including a change from the books.

As the trailer opens, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) is shown waking up near the stones and then wandering down a road, where she asks a man in a car, “What year is it?” and he tells her, “It’s 1948.”

Claire is also shown in a hospital bed with Frank (Tobias Menzies) by her side. “I am so grateful … all that matters to me is that you’re here now. Whatever happened, wherever you’ve been,” says Frank.

Those scenes are juxtaposed with footage of Claire and Jamie (Sam Heughan) in 1740s Paris, attending galas at the king’s palace and conspiring to try to stop Prince Charles Stuart’s uprising.

“Change the future, is such a thing even possible?” asks Jamie, telling Claire that “whatever happens,” he’ll make sure she’s safe.

It ends in Claire impressing upon Jamie that they have to trust in each other and he says, “In this I do and in this I will.”

Unfortunately the trailer is not being released wide yet, but there is a new behind-the-scenes video to tide fans over until the trailer is released.

Zap2it

‘Outlander’ EP says they’re ‘very close to casting Brianna’

BY ANDREA REIHER AT 12:01 PM ON JAN 9, 2016





Outlander” fans are eagerly awaiting word about who will play Brianna, the adult daughter of Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) in Season 2 of the hit Starz show. Executive producer Ron Moore tells Zap2it that they’re very close, but fans will have to wait a little longer.

“We’re very close to casting Brianna,” says Moore. “We might have found some candidates. I think we might be really closing in on somebody. I’m confident that we have a Brianna.”

Despite not having cast the role yet, Moore does offer a few tidbits about when in Season 2 fans will meet her.

“You will get to see her [but] not until we get back to the 1968 story, which won’t be for a while — towards the end of the season,” he says.

“Outlander” returns April 2016.

Sam Heughan ('Outlander') chats on the BAFTA tea party red carpet

Caitriona Balfe ('Outlander') chats on the BAFTA tea party red carpet