Warning: spoilers ahead for the first two episodes of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, available streaming now with a Hulu subscription and the STARZ app.
The long-awaited Outlander spinoff has officially premiered with two back-to-back episodes in the 2025 TV schedule, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who was glad to get the double dose of time travel romance in one night. After the first episode focused largely on Brian (Jamie Roy) and Ellen (Harriet Slater) in the 18th century, only the last ten minutes of the premiere focused on Julia (Hermione Corfield) and Henry (Jeremy Irvine) before the second episode really delved into their story.
As it turned out, their story on screen in those last ten minutes of the premiere started with a sex scene that seemed reminiscent of Claire and Jamie on Outlander, so I asked the stars for their thoughts on working with intimacy coordinators after Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan spoke highly of the practice. First things first!
What Caitriona Balfe And Sam Heughan Have Said
Outlander didn’t have an intimacy coordinator in the earliest seasons, as staffing somebody in that role wasn’t common when the show kicked off back in 2014. That changed for Season 6, and both stars only had good things to say about the new practices. Speaking with EW, Balfe recounted that it was previously a "constant negotiation between the director and the producers and how much do the producers want versus how much we feel comfortable with,” which were “never comfortable conversations, and sometimes it can cause tensions.” She went on to say this about Vanessa Coffey, who came on as the intimacy coordinator:
She's able to come in and really use language that neutralizes it for everybody. She liaisons between us and the producers or the director as what's going to be acceptable for everybody. Especially this season, I was pregnant, and it was very vulnerable for me to put myself in those situations. It was not the easiest, and to have her there advocating and to be a support was amazing.
Sam Heughan, who brought Vanessa Coffey into the production in the first place and then worked with her again on Starz’s The Couple Next Door, shared his own thoughts in the same 2022 interview while reflecting back on the earliest days of Outlander:
I realized how much we were thrown into the deep end. There was a lot of pressure on us as less experienced actors to get it right. Each year as it went past or each season, I felt the pressure. It landed on us. [Vanessa] has given us the tools to explore those scenes, to take out the actor and take us out of it and approach it through a character way. But also to facilitate the scenes, because they are awkward to shoot.
Charles Vandervoort, who plays William on Outlander, also praised working with the show’s intimacy coordinator. She made sure that he and his scene partner “were very comfortable with what was going to happen” with “established boundaries.” So, what about Blood of My Blood as the spinoff wasted no time in getting steamy with two of the four leads?
What Hermione Corfield And Jeremy Irvine Told Us
I’d predicted that Outlander: Blood of My Blood might take a few episodes before getting into any sex scenes, but I clearly underestimated how much of Julia and Henry’s love story we’d see in the 20th century before Claire’s parents accidentally traveled back a couple hundred years. The actors’ first such scene took place in the premiere, when Henry and Julia took a brief break while driving through the Scottish countryside for a romantic rendezvous before the car crash that took them away from their young daughter.
It was an intimate scene for two costars so early in a show that will run at least two seasons thanks to an early renewal, so I took a moment while speaking with Hermione Corfield and Jeremy Irvine during Starz’s Blood of My Blood press day to ask about about their experiences with an intimacy coordinator after what Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe said. Corfield, who previously recounted how paparazzi almost spoiled a huge Blood of My Blood twist, shared:
I think it's always important to have an intimacy coordinator, definitely. I think a lot of it is also your scene partner. Jeremy and I've known each other for ten years, so that is a huge help as well. We trust each other, we know each other. We can have a laugh about it all. [laughs]As a woman, it's extremely helpful to have a scene partner who has your back and is utterly there to make sure you're comfortable, which Jeremy is.
Fortunately, the two actors clearly have a strong working relationship as well as the advocacy of an intimacy coordinator. Vanessa Coffey fills that role on the prequel after doing the same on Outlander, so the show certainly recruited somebody with experience in that world of period drama romance. Jeremy Irvine shared his own take:
And I think we sort of have a laugh and know when to be serious. We tend to sort of turn our serious faces on when it's stuff like that, and then just kind of take the mick out of each other afterwards. [laughs] ...Well, we both sort of have, but my career sort of started when there weren't intimacy coordinators, and it used to be a very uncomfortable process. Now it's just sort of controlled uncomfortableness, which is better, I think.
It remains to be seen just how much romance Outlander: Blood of My Blood will deliver for Julia and Henry in Season 1. While Brian and Ellen only seem to be getting closer, Julia and Henry were separated before traveling back in time, and Julia currently doesn’t even know that her husband is anywhere other than post-WWI Scotland. If nothing else, I predict that fans should probably prepare for some yearning!
See what’s next for the love stories of Outlander: Blood of My Blood on Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on Starz, or streaming on Hulu or the Stars app. After Harriet Slater wore more than thirty feet of tartan silk for the premiere and the promise of a second season, there’s plenty of buzz surrounding the new show.
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