Traveling Through Time with Jeremy Irvine

If you ever find yourself feeling guilty that somehow, after seven seasons, you have missed out on the hit series Outlander, the sweeping, epic, time-traveling historical romance based on the novels by Diana Gabaldon, rest assured you are not alone. For the English actor Jeremy Irvine, his proper introduction to the hit show came when he was cast in its new prequel Blood of My Blood, which follows the intertwined lives of the parents of the era-crossing lovers Claire, a former World War II nurse from 1945 who is mysteriously transported to 1743 Scotland, and Jamie, the Highland scion she falls in love with there. “I could see the poster in my head when they mentioned it, but I’ll tell you I didn’t really know anything about it,” Irvine admits with a laugh. “It’s become such a phenomenon in the States, but it’s not quite as high-profile in the U.K.”

As he embarked on filming the first season of Blood of My Blood in Scotland last year, the 35-year-old quickly learned about Outlander’s enthusiastic fandom, which fervently exchanges theories and memes and was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to learn the backstories of Claire’s and Jamie’s families. The new experience served as both a comfort and, he says, a challenge. “[There’s] a lot of very passionate fans. It’s such a privilege and a relief because most of your career as an actor, you’re pouring your heart and soul into projects and, quite a lot of the time, no one ever sees it,” he explains. “So to come on to something with an existing audience and such a passionate audience is just such a privilege. I think I’m very conscious at the moment that they’re not our fans yet—they’re fans of the book and of the original Outlander series. There’s a bit of pressure to live up to that and hope that they accept us.”

With the premiere of Blood of My Blood earlier this month and its quick embrace by the fans, Irvine’s worries have been assuaged. In playing Claire’s father Henry Beauchamp, a World War I veteran who is sent two centuries back in time by the same stone circle in Scotland that works its magic on his daughter in Outlander, the actor says he purposely avoided watching the original series or reading the books even after being cast. As a twentieth-century Englishman marooned in a bygone clan-controlled Scotland, Henry is “meant to be a fish out of water,” Irvine explains. “He’s not meant to know anything about that world; he’s just trying to survive on his wits and not look out of place. I didn’t go back and watch, just in case I missed something. I didn’t want to be on set playing Henry and, as Jeremy, hear a Scottish word that I would have known from Outlander but Henry wouldn’t have known, or miss an opportunity to use that as the character. I’m learning about it with him.”

Still, Irvine says he did a considerable amount of research to understand the two historical periods Henry is living through, from the horrors of trench warfare to the intricacies of competing Highland clans. “I like to do quite a lot—ninety-nine percent of it isn’t helpful at all, but there might be a few things that are,” he explains of his process, pointing to his previous preparation for the 2022 biopic Benediction about the WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves’s autobiography Goodbye to All That as foundations for understanding Henry. “When you’re researching a character, you can try really, really hard and not get anywhere sometimes. I’ve found it’s better to keep looking at stuff and just let those happy accidents come along. I find actually when I’m looking for it, it’s probably when I’m least likely to find things.”

In a show of confidence, Blood of My Blood was renewed for a second season before the first had even premiered, and Irvine spent most of this summer in Scotland filming episodes that will be seen next year at the earliest. He seems at times to be anticipating the show as eagerly as the audience, having quickly become enthralled after joining the cast. “I read the first two scripts and I was pretty hooked,” he recalls. “I thought the writing had this feel of a world that’s so lived in. It’s like watching a series of Succession based in the seventeen hundreds. You’ve got great action sequences and then also these incredible sweeping love stories as the main theme throughout.”

After nearly two decades in the industry, Irvine is reaching a new level of attention worldwide for this series, but he’s already been through the experience of a life-changing project before, despite a somewhat circuitous path to acting. At sixteen, he attempted to leave school and join the army but was informed that he was non-deployable due to his diabetes, and he turned instead to theater. “I had a fantastic drama teacher at school, and he was telling me about how he went to drama school and what a challenge it was, how they only let in thirty people out of thousands of applicants,” he recalls. “I wanted to do something different and probably just wanted to piss off my parents as well. And I thought, ‘That ticks those two boxes.’ Then, frustratingly, my parents were very supportive.”

He struggled to find work at first after graduating, landing only a small role with the Royal Shakespeare Company “with no lines, just in the background onstage.” Then he auditioned for War Horse, Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the Tony-winning play about a young soldier and the horse who helps get him through WWI. “Of course, I didn’t think I had a cat in hell’s chance of even getting a second recall audition,” he laughs, but he booked the lead role for his screen debut. “I’d only ever acted for the stage, and all the training I’d had had only been for stage acting, amazingly. I had the best teacher in the world, I had Steven Spielberg as my personal one-on-one acting tutor for camera. I couldn’t ask for anything more, and he was so kind to me and a real paternal figure on that job. I feel very lucky.”

Since then, he’s starred alongside Helena Bonham Carter in Great Expectations, followed up Daniel Radcliffe in the sequel to The Woman in Black, and played the younger version of Pierce Brosnan’s character in the musical Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. “I do quite like the idea of something that’s a bit scary, I personally always have,” he says. “I’ve never been musical in the slightest, so when the opportunity came up to do a musical job, I was like, ‘Oh shit, yeah, let’s put myself under some pressure. Let stress myself out a bit.’” To that end, he signed on for a dance film last year that fell through after five months of training. “Most things, I’ve learned, if you do really do work hard enough, you can do it,” he laughs. “Most things—dance was pushing it, but I think we got there.” Next January, he’ll be seen starring in the horror film Return to Silent Hill, part of the series based on the popular video game.

Irvine will spend the next few months in Scotland filming the second season of Blood of My Blood while the first makes its waves in popular culture, but he says he will keep his focus on the work and not the reaction to it. “If you did every job as an actor thinking, ‘Oh my god, think how many people are going to watch this,’ I think you’d freeze up on set and your life would be very stressful. I think myself and probably most actors don’t think about that, but when you come to promote it, that’s when you really get to enjoy the fact that people are interested in whatever project you’re doing,” he says. “It’s not every job where you watch it and you’re actually proud of how it’s turned out. It’s rarer than people would think. It’s hard to work that hard on something with a group of people and become so close without really caring about the project and feeling very connected to it.”

Blood of My Blood continues on Fridays on Starz.