How 'Outlander's Charles Vandervaart and Sam Heughan Coordinated to Play Father and Illegitimate Son (Exclusive)

Paulette Cohn

13 December 2024 at 11:40 am·5-min read

It isn’t easy being related to Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) on Outlander when you know you are, but it’s even more difficult when you don’t know that you are and discover it inadvertently.

Way back when Jamie was working off his indenture to the Crown on the Helwater estate—courtesy of Lord John Grey (David Berry), Jamie didn’t get transported to the New World—he was blackmailed into bedding Geneva Dunsany (Hannah James), the daughter of the owner of Helwater, on the eve of her wedding to Ludovic Ransom, Eighth Earl of Ellesmere.

Ransom was an old man, and Geneva didn’t want that to be her introduction to sex. It was just a one-night stand, but Geneva got pregnant. When the baby was born, Geneva died and her father and mother swooped down to take William to live with them, but Ransom refused to give up the baby and he dangled William out of the window, threatening to drop him. Jamie, who was along for the ride caring for the horses, couldn’t have that, so in defense of his son, he shot Ransom and rescued William.

William returned to live with his mother’s family with Geneva’s sister Isobel serving as his mother, and when she married Lord John, he became William’s surrogate father. When William was 6 years old, the similarities between the two became apparent and Jamie decided it was time he left Helwater, which Lord John helped him to do.

The secret of his birth has been kept from William (as an adult played by Charles Vandervaart) until he overhears a conversation between Lord John and Jamie and discovers that Jamie is the man who sired him.

“His immediate reaction is the classic Fraser fire,” Vandervaart tells Parade. “It’s passion. It’s so difficult for him to wrap his head around what’s happening. I think it’s going to take him a couple hours of conceptualizing to really understand the depths of what’s happening.”

The Fraser fire is the temper that William inherited from redheaded Jamie and he trashes Lord John’s house on the way out to let off some steam.

“His initial reaction is the betrayal that he feels because Lord John Grey has been the consistent person in his life, the source of love in his life, the person that he confides in,” Vandervaart continues. “To discover that that’s the person that orchestrated this lie and that has been keeping this information from him for his entire life, that stings the most.”

Maybe when he calms down, William will understand that Lord John was not without his reasons for the pretense. He wanted William to have his title and inheritance, a much easier life than if his true parentage was acknowledged.

So will William ever be able to forgive Lord John?

“I do think so,” Vandervaart says. “I think that’s the really important thing because Lord John is his anchor to love and to caring about other people and empathy and all these great things that he was taught growing up. I think when William comes around and starts thinking a little bit more rationally about the situation, he’ll understand that the people in his life did this out of love and because they care about William. But I think right now it feels like no one cares about him, no one really had the respect for him to share his identity.”

It will be crucial for William to reconcile with Lord John at some point, and also to meet Jamie when they aren’t on opposite sides of the Revolutionary War, but that will happen after William has time to calm down and process everything and get more information as to what exactly transpired.

That said, Vandervaart and Heughan did coordinate a bit on their characters, so that there is a resemblance between father and son, but not so much that it would initially be obvious to William.

“Sam and I definitely talked a little bit about mannerisms,” Vandervaart says. “Jamie does a little finger tap whenever he’s thinking about something. He’ll do it on his gun or just like here [taps his cheek], and we decided to incorporate that just a little bit. We don’t have to overkill it and have it in every single scene, but William does that every now and then when he’s really thinking hard about something.”

As Episode 712 begins, William is still reeling from the news of his parentage, and is hurting everyone around him, including himself. He does some things he later will not be proud of as a man who prides himself on being honorable.

“I think the sooner that he reconciles with his identity and lets go of all of these ideas that he had growing up, maybe the quicker he can heal,” Vandervaart concludes. “I’m not sure what he’s going to do with his title. I think maybe the only reason he would hold onto it was to maintain the reputation of Lord John Grey, because that is someone that he ultimately loves. So that might be a factor for sure and that might be his own way of demonstrating honor to the person that raised him."

New episodes of the second half of Outlander Season 7 are released at midnight ET on the STARZ app, all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms each Friday. On linear broadcast, it will debut on STARZ Friday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT in the U.S.

Next, Everything We Know So Far About Outlander's 8th and Final Season