'Outlander' Season 2: Graham McTavish & Andrew Gower Talk 'Prestonpans'

Watching
Dougal on the battlefield testing the range of the Redcoats’ weapons was a
thrill for Andrew’s character, who later made an effort to get into the
conflict. 

“He
does love battle and he does want to be on the frontline and he does see
himself as a fighter, though [he’s] slightly deluded in that sense I think,”
Andrew said. 

While the
relationship between the two men started out on good footing, when Dougal returned
from the just-won battle and berated Jamie and those in the cottage for
treating the British soldiers (unaware the Prince was in the room), it immediately soured.
Bonnie Prince Charlie marched up to the fresh-off-the-battlefield Highland
warrior, grabbed his face and berated him, a gesture that wasn’t rehearsed
(like the hug in the marsh scene), but added to the intensity of the moment, Graham said. 

“He
just grabbed hold of it and pinched my face so that he was holding it and for
someone like Dougal, that would’ve been all he could do not to physically react
to that. But it informed for me very much the scene that he had to control
himself,” Graham explained. “And it’s something that doesn’t come naturally to Dougal — being able
to control his emotions in a situation like that, especially given how he is
feeling at that point – the elation, the bloodlust, the fact that he’s just
come off the battlefield having slaughtered every British soldier he could find. And then, to
have that happen to him, it was, yeah, [Andrew] made some really great [acting]
choices with that.” 

It was an intense scene, but it actually came together fairly fast, Andrew said.

“The
scene itself, it didn’t take too
much blocking. It was pretty [quick] the way we kind of approached it, both
myself, Graham, and the other soldiers and [Sam] all kind of fell into
place quite quickly, so it was a fun one to shoot,” Andrew added.

Although
it was a great scene for the actors involved in it to perform, the teardown by the Prince was
crushing for the character of Dougal.

“The hardest moment for Dougal, I think, one of the hardest in the whole season, if not both season is when he incurs the wrath of the Prince,” Graham said. “I mean, that’s the world falling from beneath his feet at that point and to be rescued by Jamie, in that way, that would have really hurt. And it’s only the distraction of Angus’ death that I think pulls him out of that to be honest, because he has something more important to think about. But… that’s a low, low, low moment for Dougal.”