'Outlander' Star Sam Heughan Says He's Ready to 'Love Again'

For his role in Outlander, Sam Heughan, who plays Jamie Fraser in the time-travel epic romantic drama, is known as the King of Men. Jamie is brave, loyal, extremely intelligent, funny, resourceful, educated, mysterious, noble, an outlaw, honest, has a high tolerance to pain, is Scot-stubborn, and completely loveable. And with all that, the takeaway for the role is his undying love for his wife Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe), for whom he would lay down his life.

It's a hard act to follow, but during the COVID lockdown, Heughan got his hands on the script for Love Again, and decided it would be a nice follow up, being that it is a modern day love story, with all the elements that make up a good rom-com.

“It read so, so well,” Heughan says. “It's a very funny, very tight script and I just thought, ‘really, really nice characters, really rounded characters, really pleasant love story that I think that we all need in this day and age.’”

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Love Again begins with Mira Ray (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) losing her soon-to-be fiancé to a car accident. As part of her recovery process, she begins sending him romantic texts to his old cell phone number, not realizing that the number was reassigned to Rob Burns (Heughan)

Rob, who has just been dumped by his last girlfriend, is intrigued by the texts and decides to meet the woman behind them. When he’s assigned to write a profile of megastar Céline Dion (playing herself in her first film role), he enlists her help in figuring out how to meet Mira in person…and win her heart.

“The story, I think, will appeal to everyone,” Heughan continues. “It really has everything. Obviously, there’s the humor but also these characters are rooted in grief, in some sort of pain, that they both have to get over. They both are in their own bubbles, essentially, and they learn to love again and to live again.”

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Love Again takes Heughan from the 18^th century to modern day, so preparation for this role was different than what he went through for Outlander or even SAS: Red Notice, which is also in the 21^st century. To begin with, he began watching romantic comedies, which he hadn’t done previously because he thought they weren’t for him.

“As soon as I started to watch them, I fell in love with them,” he admits. “They're brilliant, they're adult, they're funny, they're dark. It was a revelation to me. My favorites were probably the Nora Ephron films, anything with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. In fact, You've Got Mail, I think, is quite similar. Essentially, this movie is almost an homage or the best bits of other romantic comedies.”

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Of course, working with the two women—Chopra Jonas and Dion—was also a plus. Heughan describes Chopra Jonas as “warm, generous, and a fun acting partner," but Dion is an icon.

“She's done so much, so yes, it was obviously a big draw of the movie when I found out that she was on board. I am so excited to present this to the world for people to discover her if they don't know her and, if they don't know her, where have you been? I think the fans of Céline Dion are going to really enjoy this movie.”

Love Again opens in theaters on May 5.

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