Outlander star Caitríona Balfe responds to "shocking" episode 11

Understandably, her emotions had to be pushed to the side temporarily to wed Lord John Grey (David Berry) in order to evade arrest for being a spy.

But the fact remains that it was a startling turn of events for Claire, and we see her completely wracked with sadness, eventually contemplating suicide.

Taking a scalpel from her equipment, she holds it to her arm, but then hears the voice of Jamie and suddenly stops.

Speaking about the nature of this episode, Balfe spoke exclusively with RadioTimes.com and said: "I think the whole episode is quite shocking.

"I think if there are show watchers who haven't read the book, I think their minds are going to be like, 'What the hell has happened?' Which I think is great.

"I think it's super shocking. And I think, even as an actor, you're like, 'How do I do this? I don't understand this.'

"And to be given something so challenging and so shocking this deep into a show, I think, is such a great testament to how much this show keeps reinventing itself and digging deep and finding new ways to present things."

As for how the actress hopes fans will react to this episode, Balfe admits: "I hope they'll be shocked, mind-blown, but enjoy it."

The episode also sees Claire and Lord John bond over their grief of Jamie and in a surprise twist, sleeping together.

But in terms of exploring that bond with one another, Balfe said: "Yeah, it was firstly wonderful to work with David Barry on this stuff. It's hard to understand how you get these two characters to that point, and we worked brilliantly with Vanessa Coffey, our intimacy coordinator."

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Balfe continued: "It was really funny, actually, because Sam and I, we know each other so well, we have such a shorthand and we have been doing these scenes for over a decade.

"But with David, we've never worked together in this way, and it was actually quite interesting because Vanessa had us just go back to basics and do these really simple, like, almost like the beginning of acting class exercises.

"Just building trust with each other, because we really had to go to some crazy places in that scene, and it was just finding a way of really trusting each other for the first time in that way."

Balfe went on: "I think it's a shared pain. It's a desperate need for both of them to have some kind of solace. It's not really about sex. It's definitely not about pleasure. It's just a human desire for something to shake you out of this pain.

"I think that's where they meet, but actually, the intimacy and the bond we see the next day, the next morning where Lord John reveals this really poetic, but very painful, side of his life where he can't be who he authentically is and the secrecy and the hiding and the price of that, the cost to his life of being a gay man in this time, that was really beautiful.

"David Berry did an amazing job. And it's, yeah, it's gorgeous, I thought it was really beautiful."

Outlander season 7 part 2 is available to stream on Starz in the US and on MGM+ in the UK every Saturday. You can buy Diana Gabaldon's books on Amazon.

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