How #Outlander Plans to Handle Season 4 Rape Storyline Amid the #MeToo Climate https://t.co/FLbrxJHd3Ypic.twitter.com/5kv0cBbBZL
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) March 27, 2018
The Starz drama will again have to tackle the subject of rape and sexual assault in an upcoming season four episode.
In author Diana Gabaldon's fourth Outlander novel, Drums of Autumn, a main character is raped.
"In Drums of Autumn, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie's (Sam Heughan) adult daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton) goes through the stones and back in time to reunite with her mother. She also meets her father Jamie for the very first time. But with her journey through time comes a moment in which the psychopath Stephen Bonnet (Downton Abbey's Ed Speleers) rapes Bree."
Executive producer Matt B. Roberts :
"If we're trying to make a political statement within the show, then we've lost the plot. The characters have to be true to themselves and the storylines, and if someone gleans something from that, then that's an individual gleaning something from it. But we don't set out in the writer's room to make a political statement about any character or any movement or anything."
"When a modern audience views Outlanderthrough a modern lens, then yes, you can have problems with it. But if you actually place yourself in the period — and we're not saying that rape was OK in that period either — but how the characters view it is how we're showing it. We're not showing it how we view it and that makes a difference."
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