Ed Speleers Says Goodbye to Stephen Bonnet, Outlander's Resident Seafaring Psychopath
If you haven't watched the tenth episode of Outlander's fifth season, proceed with caution. Major spoilers ahead!
Outlander's Ed Speleers was on a beach vacation with his family when the show's second assistant director called, asking him to come in for a prosthetic fitting.
"I thought, 'What are you going to give me?' And it was bullet wounds," he says. "Okay, sounds jazzy. I thought maybe in the arm or the leg, or who knows? Being Outlander it could be in a slightly more precarious position. But, it ended up being between the eyes."
When it sunk in that this season would mark the end for his character, sadistic pirate Stephen Bonnet, Speleers was "pretty upset."
"My beer dropped to the sand, when I realized I was now going to be unemployed," he tells me over the phone, only half-joking.
For the past two seasons, Speelers has played the seafaring psychopath who raped Brianna Fraser and terrorized her family, but Bonnet could only outrun fate for so long. And while Speleers is sad to leave the series, he feels his final episode "was a good way to say goodbye to the character."
"It was a way of seeing him off properly," he says.
Here, the actor opens up about filming Bonnet's death scene, reflects on whether Brianna's shot was a murder or a mercy killing, and shares some thoughts on the changes between the Outlander TV show and the books that inspired it.
A pirate who is afraid of drowning is such an interesting idea for a character. Tell me about his fear of the sea.
I mean, it's palpable, isn't it? This notion of his deep-seated fear of drowning. He was treated quite poorly as a child. They bound him, and then he was buried alive, essentially. And I wonder if that triggered something with drowning. Imagine being buried alive. It's a similar feeling to drowning—I think there's a link there. But he's really spent his whole life trying to conquer his fear in a way. And I think this is a common thing in human behavior. Sometimes your biggest fear, you end up trying to work as close to it as possible in order to conquer it, maybe never having a handle on it.
I think it's a great character detail that Diana [Gabaldon] has come up with, to make this sea-fearing man a pirate. I think it's a brilliant character trait.
Can you break down Bonnet’s death scene for me? What was it like to film?
Quite surreal is the only way I can think of it. When you know it's your character’s death scene, there is a real danger of falling into this trap, of building everything up in your head. And of course, there's a huge amount of work you need to do to be ready for that moment, but the scene was weirdly still. In my mind it was, anyway. It was quite a tranquil setting, beautiful lake, beautiful woodlands, people in costume on the banks. And there was obviously crew there, and they were all geared up in this sort of diving gear that makes me think they could probably go to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean with it.
But the moment when the camera went on, it was very surreal, it was almost like I was oblivious to anybody else being there; it was a very calming moment. And then it was over so quickly. You spend all day thinking about it, and actually get to it and it's over before you know it. I just went into my own little world, and that sort of was sober, more than anything. It was almost weirdly calming, out there. It was very strange.
Roger poses an interesting question at the end of this episode to Brianna, essentially asking her “Was that a mercy killing or a murder?” when she shoots Bonnet. What do you think it was?
There is an element of mercy to it, but I feel that she is taking control in that moment. She is taking some power back, because the control had been taken away from her. Brianna is putting him out of his misery—I don't think it's purely just a murder, but she's decided to do it. I think it’s a case of saying, ‘Well I can see you're suffering, I'm going to take control of the situation. I'm going to end it for you, not because I like you, not because I've resolved the situation I'm in, but because I'm taking control.’
Fans of the show can be pretty vocal about changes from the book, and there are a few deviations in Bonnet’s storyline this season. What would you say to someone who might be upset that the show doesn't follow the exact same plot?
Well, I'm upset as well. Because I would've liked to have played out more of the things that were in the books. It's brilliant that there is the amount of almost unrivaled passion from the followers of the books, who are now of course followers of the show. They've been supporting this story for nearly 30 years.
So I think that's fair enough for them to have some grievances with what may transpire; however, I would caveat that by saying it’s very difficult to keep everything in. These are big books—getting them down into 10, 12 episodes, is quite an ordeal.
I was hurt by the idea of not being able to play the character any more and maybe not seeing how some of the stories happen in the book, but you also can see it for the greater good. And as long as the delivery, and what they do keep is on point—if you're paying respect to the books, and keeping the truth there—then, I think that there has to be a bit of leeway from the people who admire these books and the TV show so much.
And you know, it doesn't always work out. There's been plenty of TV adaptations, film adaptations, I've been in them, where they don't work because they're not true enough. But I think the producers and writers have done a pretty good job here.
Is there a chance that we could see Stephen Bonnet on the show again?
Outlander, as the producers have joked with me, has quite the record of doing flashbacks, and of bringing people back. So, never say never.
I would love to work with these people again in some capacity, whether it be on this, or on something else, who knows. I think it'd be pretty hard to find a way back in unless it is a flashback, but I don't know anything. I'm none the wiser.
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