Yay! Someone besides me sees it! I call it, MM 2.0! Itโs the same playbook, more blatant and a more believable person (for some).
I disagree with the last sentence. The players are older and I believe they are tired though tired of having to play the game. For whatever reasons theyโre playing, theyโre both in it together. ๏ฟผ
Before anyone comes with Sam or Caitriona hate, perhaps take a step back. Ignore the execution and the moving parts. Think about the reasons itโs happening in the first place.
The only show brave enough to ask: are we watching a prestige-level promotional rolloutโฆ or assembling a joint intelligence task force to analyse Back Contact Incident 2025?
It has been a productive week.
Vogue released a glossy photoshoot and interview. Beautiful images. Stunning light. Familiar talking points. A respectable increase in promotional oxygen. Fandom responded appropriately: posting, reposting, zooming, comparing lighting, assessing body language, and conducting a detailed audit of the current opacity level of a certain wrist tattoo.
For those tracking: the tattoo remains present. Faint, but operational. A ghost of its former self. Scholars remain divided.
There was also a video interview. Same faint spiral. Same polished smiles. A selfie clip thanking โthe best Outlander fans.โ Promotional machinery is clearly in motion. The lighting is intentional. The spiral is under observation.
And yet none of that was the real headline.
The real headline of the week was a 30-second wedding clip from last summer.
Recovered through a level of digital excavation normally associated with declassified Cold War archives. A random wedding guest posted it. A dedicated operative located it. The footage was delivered to P* Headquarters and immediately processed for narrative deployment.
Phase 1: the original 30 seconds.
Phase 2: a 12-second slow-motion enhancement.
Phase 3: a 5-second Directorโs Cut isolating what is now officially designated as Back Contact Incident (BCI).
The five-second cut was then slowed further for clarity - in case anyone blinked and missed destiny - and posted twice.
Because once is coincidence. Twice is confirmation.
At this point, we were no longer watching a wedding dance. We were studying Zapruder footage. Angles assessed. Frame rates adjusted. Was his hand resting? Guiding? Hovering with intent? What did the wrist tension suggest? Was that a micro-smile at second 4.7?
Historians will debate.
Meanwhile, counter-footage surfaced. Other guests. Other dancing. Other weddings. The radical proposition that weddings often includeโฆ dancing. One caption read, โDancing into the weekend likeโฆโ
An audacious theory.
It is remarkable how quickly normal choreography can be elevated to epic romance proof when slowed to 0.25x speed and internally soundtracked with destiny.
Meanwhile, the previously forecasted high-risk atmospheric event, Valentineโs Day, arrived and passed with remarkable restraint. Rugby was watched. Content was posted. Social media engagement increased. No declarations. No rings. No silhouettes framed by candlelight. No emergency weather alerts.
Just a man in Germany watching sport with the emotional intensity of someone deeply committed to Scotland vs England.
Which, depending on your preferred narrative, is either deeply suspicious or profoundly on brand.
What fascinates me is not the content itself. It is the stamina of analysis.
At this rate, if someone blinks asymmetrically during the next press junket, we will have a three-part documentary and a 0.25x Directorโs Cut titled BlinkGate.
Anyway.
Season 8 promo accelerates. Operation Spiral Watch remains active. Back Contact Incident 2025 has entered peer review. Sassenach โThe Final Chapterโ has initiated a staggered teaser campaign and will be revealed Thursday. Because no week is complete without a whisky subplot.
Susan Swarbrick has interviewed Outlander star Sam Heughan on numerous occasions.
Ahead of the show's eagerly anticipated final episodes, she writes: "Outlanderโs leading man Sam Heughan is not merely rounding out a chapter on screen, but also one that has irrevocably shaped his own life over the 13 years since he was cast as Highland warrior Jamie Fraser.
"As a writer for The Herald, I have covered all things Outlander extensively over the past decade-and-a-bit. Not least interviewing Heughan regularly during this time. Looking back over these conversations in retrospect is nothing short of fascinating.
"On paper, the tale of how a jobbing Scottish actor rose to become a global star, author, entrepreneur and philanthropist bears all the hallmarks of the proverbial overnight sensation.
"Yet to describe it as such would arguably be a great disservice to Heughan, a facile tag that belies the magnitude of all he has built and achieved.
"While there have been many Scots who have parlayed success in one field into spin-off careers in other areas, few have done so with the seamless dexterity of Heughan.
"To that end, the evolution of Sam Heughan has been a masterclass to watch unfold.
"Iโve trawled back through the archives to shine a spotlight on his journey to date. Unravelling the story behind the man, the myths and the mystery. Buckle upโฆ"
Here's the entire article @rosfrank & anyone else who wants a long read that, while a nice summary of his career, has nothing new to add.
With the final series of Outlander now only weeks away, we stand in a bittersweet hinterland for fans of the hit TV show.
Viewers will, at long last, get to find out how the epic saga that has spanned oceans, continents and a hefty chunk of Scotland's 18th-century history ends. Yet, at the same time, they must also bid farewell to a much-beloved set of characters that many hold dear.
Perhaps most acutely aware of this stark juxtaposition is the man who has been at the heart of the telly drama since it first aired in 2014.
Outlander's leading man Sam Heughan is not merely rounding out a chapter on screen, but also one that has irrevocably shaped his own life over the 13 years since he was cast as Highland warrior Jamie Fraser.
As a writer for The Herald, I have covered all things Outlander extensively over the past decade-and-a-bit. Not least interviewing Heughan regularly during this time. Looking back over these conversations in retrospect is nothing short of fascinating.
On paper, the tale of how a jobbing Scottish actor rose to become a global star, author, entrepreneur and philanthropist bears all the hallmarks of the proverbial overnight sensation.
Yet to describe it as such would arguably be a great disservice to Heughan, a facile tag that belies the magnitude of all he has built and achieved.
While there have been many Scots who have parlayed success in one field into spin-off careers in other areas, few have done so with the seamless dexterity of Heughan.
To that end, the evolution of Sam Heughan has been a masterclass to watch unfold.
Curiously, though, for many within his homeland, he remains a largely unknown entity, vaguely referred to as "that guy off Outlander".
With this in mind, I've trawled back through the archives to shine a spotlight on his journey to date. Unravelling the story behind the man, the myths and the mystery. Buckle upโฆ
Sam Heughan's early years
When Heughan, now 45, landed the life and career trajectory changing mantle as Jamie Fraser in 2013, his path as an actor had already seen boundless twists, turns and tricky cul-de-sacs.
Originally from Balmaclellan in Galloway, Heughan spent his teenage years in Edinburgh. It was there, after discovering a love of drama while attending the Steiner School, he began treading the boards as a member of the Lyceum Youth Theatre in the 1990s.
To hone his craft, Heughan helped out backstage and worked as an usher selling ice cream to the audience at intervals, which allowed him to watch shows at close quarters.
He made one of his earliest stage appearances, aged 18, as "spear carrier number two" in Macbeth - a bit part that might have been consigned to the annals of history were it not for what Heughan himself describes as a "full circle moment".
Last autumn he led the cast as the titular Macbeth for a sell-out, two-month run with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The Daniel Raggett-directed production - set against a contemporary backdrop of a gangster-packed Glaswegian pub and costarring Lia Williams, alongside a strong Scottish cast including Alec Newman, Gilly Gilchrist, Alison Peebles and Jamie Marie Leary - won rave reviews.
This would have come as little surprise to anyone who followed Heughan's fledgling theatre career. While still a student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), he landed a landmark job.
A role in David Greig's Outlying Islands at the Traverse Theatre during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2002 saw him nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as most promising performer.
The renowned former Traverse Theatre artistic director Philip Howard has fond memories of the audition by a then-rookie Heughan to play John, a young ornithologist documenting Hebridean bird species as the spectre of war looms.
"When he leaves the room, I do a private little punch in the air," Howard recounts in the foreword to Heughan's 2022 memoir Waypoints. "Not only have we got our John, but this guy doesn't seem to have any idea how good he is."
How Sam Heughan became Jamie Fraser
You'd be forgiven for not knowing much about Heughan before his time on Outlander. His telly debut was in the ITV drama, Island at War, in 2004.
Over the next decade, he played a footballer in River City and had a recurring role as a secret drug dealer in daytime soap Doctors, alongside small parts in Midsomer Murders and Rebus. He also starred as brewery founder Hugh Tennent in humorous commercials for the lager brand.
While resting - as they say in acting parlance - London-based Heughan paid the bills pulling pints in bars, delivering sandwiches by bicycle, selling perfume, working as a hospital receptionist and doing a stint in the Vivienne Westwood department at Harrods.
He saved every penny possible to shuttle back and forth to Los Angeles for auditions, repeatedly trying and failing to get his big Hollywood break.
Heughan screen-tested - unsuccessfully - for everything from a Superman reboot to Marvel's Agents of SHIELD. He also tried out for Game of Thrones on no fewer than seven occasions, without ever landing a part.
When he was cast as Outlander's Jamie Fraser in 2013, the little-known Scot found himself catapulted into the spotlight. Heughan became the flesh-and-blood embodiment of a hero who had previously graced the pages of the bestselling book series by US author Diana Gabaldon.
The pressure and scrutiny was instant - at least on the other side of the Atlantic. Long before the first scenes were even shot, aficionados of the Outlander novels began to sift through every detail of Heughan's CV and flood online forums with musings on his suitability.ย
Even Gabaldon had her initial misgivings about his casting. Interviewed during a book event at Stirling Castle in 2015, she recalled having "Googled him" and being somewhat aghast at what she saw.
She said: "At this point he had relatively little film work and just a series of extremely bizarre still photos - his IMDb page is strange. He is a very magnetic, charming young man and a very chameleonic actor, but he's different, physically different, in every part.
"Some of his photos are strange. I was sitting there typing, 'this man is grotesque, what are you thinking?" Gabaldon, though, swiftly changed her mind when she saw his audition tape, something she describes as "a running joke with Sam and I now."
Some might say it was kismet that Heughan ended up playing swashbuckling Jamie
Fraser. There is an anecdote he tells that has always stuck in my mind.
As a child, Heughan would conjure fantasy worlds in the grounds of Kenmure Castle, near New Galloway, where he lived for a time in converted stables with his artist mother Chrissie and elder brother Cirdan (yep, that's a The Lord of the Rings reference - their late father was a fan).
"I spent a lot of time running about outdoors with a wooden stick pretending it was a sword," he told me in 2015. "I was obsessed with King Arthur legends and Robert the Bruce."
Sam Heughan is always a gentleman
A question I've been asked a lot over the years is what Heughan is like in person. The truth? He's warm, affable and genuinely likeable. He takes the work seriously and treats it with the gravitas he believes it deserves, never flippant, always earnest.
This polite self-effacing manner could be misconstrued as dull yet, by the same token, Heughan has little hesitation in gamely poking fun at himself. He possesses superb comic timing and hopefully, that is something we will see more of in this next chapter.
Notably, as Heughan's public profile has soared into the stratosphere, he has remained impressively well-grounded. He was 33 when cast in Outlander, having spent close to two decades pursuing his acting dream.
There are moments when Heughan exudes the air of someone still pinching themselves at their good fortune - testament to the graft, disappointment and hard-fought auditions for roles that ultimately passed him by.
Sam Heughan the motorcyclist
ย In all our conversations, Heughan comes across not necessarily as a loner, but as someone who is hugely content and comfortable in his own company. Aside from discussing acting, the moments he is most animated is when talking about time spent outdoors.
Heughan loves running, hiking and adventuring. He is a keen Munro bagger and a few years ago completed the 96-mile West Highland Way. More recently, Heughan travelled to Nepal and ticked off a bucket list goal of visiting Mount Everest base camp.
He got his motorcycle licence in 2020 and has documented road trips on a clutch of trusty steeds, including custom-made machines by Harley-Davidson and Triumph.
The Outlander effect
The first interview I did with Heughan, in 2015, was conducted wryly tongue-in-cheek. To his credit, he took it in good form and playfully batted answers back.
The assumption - wrongly - at that time was that Outlander was a frothy bodice-ripper dressed up as historical drama. Braveheart meets Mills & Boon.
Few fathomed the gamut of weighty subject matter that the TV show would tackle across its 12-year run, including stillbirth, grief, post-traumatic stress disorder, sexual assault, addiction, murder and incest.
The New York Times had suggested in an early review that Outlander was a mix of the "ye-olde-time grimy violence and sex of Game of Thrones and a little of the plummy accents and cosy Anglophilia of Downton Abbey".
It was a description that Heughan gave short shrift to. "I think the New York Times should watch it again," he told me. "Absolutely not - it is none of those things. It is a very good story with great characters and I think that, once people watch the first few episodes, they will be hooked."
He wasn't wrong. Not only did this translate to millions of viewers worldwide but also led to what has been dubbed the "Outlander effect" and a tourism boom at the Scottish locations used for filming.
Doune Castle in Perthshire has famously seen visitor numbers surge by a reported 200% thanks to its cameo as the fictional
Castle Leoch.
A raft of places around Falkirk and West Lothian - Blackness Castle, Linlithgow Palace, Beecraigs Country Park, Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway, Midhope Castle and Muiravonside Country Park - have all enjoyed similar rises.
In 2019, VisitScotland produced a 20-page document on the phenomenon and economic benefits reaped, from hotel spend to boosting the coffers of key historical sites.
Sam Heughan's charity work
There's a saying that the good you put out into the universe has a way of coming back to you. Whether Heughan buys into that adage, I couldn't say for sure, but there is an inkling or two that he might.
While getting into shape for an early series of Outlander, the actor was working with a personal trainer who set him the goal of running two marathons in a month. Heughan decided to turn this endeavour into a fundraiser, one that brought in ยฃ30,000 for cancer charities.
This planted the seed for My Peak Challenge, a charitable health and fitness platform launched by Heughan in 2015. His loyal fanbase were quick to get on board, seeing the idea burgeon into an international community of dedicated "Peakers".
Based in Los Angeles, it offers workout plans, nutrition coaching and wellness programmes with a stated "50% of net member fees" donated to charity. To date, $7.4 million (ยฃ5.4m) has been raised for causes including Blood Cancer UK, Marie Curie and the World Wildlife Fund.
Heughan is an official celebrity ambassador for the 2026 Glasgow Commonwealth Games. In tandem, My Peak Challenge has chosen the Commonwealth Sport Foundation as its dedicated charity for this year.
Sam Heughan is a whisky nerd
Heughan is a self-described "nerd" when it comes to Scotland's national drink. He launched his own blended Scotch whisky - The Sassenach - in 2020, which takes its moniker from the affectionate nickname that his Outlander character uses for his English wife.
In an interview with The Herald last September, he recounted a misty-eyed evening with a friend in a London pub on Burns Night some years ago.
"I didn't really drink whisky, but we had a top-shelf single malt," said Heughan. "The smell and taste transported me back to Scotland. That's what I've tried to do with my whisky. It's like a hug in a glass and reminds me of everything I love about Scotland."
As he noted in Waypoints, the "easiest way" would have been to "team up with a drinks company" who could "slap stickers on some mass-market product"
Instead, Heughan embarked upon meticulous research and worked with a master blender to create a whisky that matched his exact vision.
Sam's an author too
"I don't believe in restricting myself to just being an actor," Heughan writes in Waypoints, one of several best-selling books he has penned to date.
His other titles include Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other and its companion volume The Clanlands Almanac: Seasonal Stories from Scotland, both co-authored with fellow Outlander alumni Graham McTavish.
The pair did two series of telly travelogue Men In Kilts together. In the first run, they criss-crossed Scotland by campervan and for the second explored McTavish's adopted homeland of New Zealand.
The vibe was reminiscent of Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing in the same rich vein of two good pals enjoying a shared pilgrimage.
Last September, Heughan published The Cocktail Diaries: A Spirited Adventure, billed as a "love letter" to his favourite tipples.
The next chapter for Sam Heughan
Almost every time I have chatted with Heughan, he has spoken about his desire to return to theatre. He's scratched that itch with Macbeth, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him pop up in a Scottish-based stage production in the not-too-distant future.
In the pipeline is geo-political TV thriller series Embassy, with Anna Kendrick, James Murray and JK Simmons. Heughan has a penchant for being cast in action roles but hopefully will find some suitable vehicles to showcase his comedy chops in the coming years too.
He possesses a canny knack for comic timing that, coupled with his physicality as an actor, would have made him a brilliant James Bond (sadly the feedback from Heughan's audition for the franchise's famed producer Barbara Broccoli was he "wasn't edgy enough by nature").
Whatever comes next, I would posit he won't be short on ideas - nor offers. Heughan has spoken of a life-long curiosity about space travel. Could an interstellar odyssey be in his sights?
Although, for now, his focus remains closer to home. Having already been a major champion of Scotland's culture and landscapes, he seems intent on extending that reach to less-well-trodden nooks of the country. Sam Heughan: tourism tsar? That could have a nice ring to it.
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