Outlander's Caitriona Balfe on the Biggest Thing Claire Will Learn This Season
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As much as Outlander is a show about romance and history, it's also a story about science—the strange nature of time travel, Brianna's inventions and experiments, and of course, Claire's work as a healer in the community at Fraser's Ridge.
But at the start of this season, Claire is using her talents and knowledge of 20th-century medicine not necessarily to heal the psychological wounds of her sexual assault, but rather to mask them through the use of an early anesthetic known as ether.
"We meet Claire and I think initially what we see is that she's really trying to put on this brave face and trying to show everybody that she's okay. And that's very typical of Claire to not ask for help, to really not allow herself the moments to be vulnerable, because she's always used to being the rock for other people," actress Caitriona Balfe, who plays Claire on the series, tells T&C. "But obviously what happened at the end of last season has had a huge impact on her and on her mental health and on her stability."
Claire's initial intention is to use the ether to help her safely operate on patients. But as she experiments and begins testing it on herself, she finds "a comfort to the escapism that it gives her, that she begins to rely upon," Balfe says.
"And as our journey goes on, we'll see that Claire really starts to unravel in a way that we haven't seen her before. She really needs to find a new way of coping and really learn how to ask for help. I think is the biggest thing that she'll have to learn this season."
Outlander airs Sunday nights on Starz. Sign up for Starz
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