David Berry Talks Lord John In Season 8, Episode 8

This week’s “Outlander” marked two occasions that don’t come around every day: The Starz series’ 100th episode, and James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser’s saying he’s sorry.

The historical drama’s penultimate episode ever spent a significant amount of time with David Berry’s Lord John Grey, who was kidnapped at the end of the previous hour. Capt. Ezekiel Richardson planned to blackmail Grey by sending evidence of Grey’s homosexuality to his brother, Hal, the Duke of Pardloe. (There was a whole time-travel element to the gambit, as well: For full details, read our recap.)

John eventually was rescued by Claire, William, and Jamie. The latter eventually also copped to how poorly he’d treated John since learning that Claire had become Lady Grey — in all senses of the word — when they both thought Jamie dead. 

The reconciliation between Berry’s Lord John and Sam Heughan’s Jamie was one of the final season’s best scenes. So naturally, I wanted to talk to Berry about it. (And no, there’s still no update on a Lord John spin-off.)

TVLINE | Lord John’s worst nightmare came to pass in the last couple of episodes. The secret he’s been holding so deeply is brought to light for nefarious purposes. And then William found out. In your mind, has he been lower over the course of the series than he is while he’s in that boathouse?
DAVID BERRY | It’s a difficult question, because the depths that Lord John keeps getting thrown to are almost bottomless at this point. [Laughs] He just keeps getting dunked on. I don’t know. Season 7B was pretty tough for Lord John. He was beaten up by Jamie. He lost his friendship. He thought Jamie was dead. I really don’t know. This man is just exceptionally good at taking a punch, both literally and metaphorically.

What is amazing about the character is just his resilience and his ability to remain, I guess, somewhat composed through that, and retain his integrity as a character and his love for those that mattered to him. I guess that’s the best I can answer that.

TVLINE | I have a silly question, and then a more serious one.
Good! I like silly questions.

TVLINE | Jamie busts into Lord John’s cell looking like Fabio with his hair down and his wet shirt — obviously, Lord John is afraid for his life and happy anyone is there to free him, but is there any small part of him that ever thought about Jamie coming to his rescue? The moment is a little made for a romance novel, you know?
[Long pause] It didn’t cross my mind.

TVLINE | You’re like, “No, weirdo.”
[Laughs] No, not — well, yes, look: Being rescued is, I guess, very romantic in the sense that yes, there is a certain romance to the door being busted open and the first person he sees is the man that he loves. That’s definitely romantic, and I’m not going to deny that that was something that would have passed through Lord John’s mind.

And his first response to Jamie saying something was like, “You’re not oil painting either,” which I I thought was a really nice line. When Jamie says, “You don’t look so great,” and Lord John’s like, “Well, f**king, you look terrible as well.” [Laughs] However, on top of that, when — and I did see this online, because I remember like when I was in this photo of like the 100th episode, this is the 100th episode — and I had my beard on, which, is a new look for Lord John, as well, and Jamie had his hair out. I remember people commenting on how much they were, in Australia we’d say, “frothing” over Jamie’s long hair, and that never really occurred to me. I didn’t see that. I was like, “It’s just his hair down.” … You’re hoping they’d be caught up in Lord John’s glorious beard, but no: I think the hair, Jamie’s long hair trumps that by a mile. [Laughs]

TVLINE | We’ve talked before about how how neither of us would be ready to forgive Jamie for how he’s treated Lord John as of late. How much work do you think Lord John has to do to In that great, long-awaited reconciliation scene at his house to get to a place where he can accept the Jamie’s apology? How much emotional distance does Lord John have to cover in those few minutes?
There’s certainly a lot of distance. The scene starts that way deliberately. Jamie comes from a place of just complete incomprehension of his faults or what was wrong. But Lord John stays with it, though. He slams the door on Jamie’s face, but I think he’s quietly hoping that Jamie will come in and follow him and help and resolve the argument. At that point, it feels like a foolish hope because, as we know, and there’s a line in that conflict where he says, “Frasers are notoriously stubborn,” and that’s something that Lord John knows very well — not just with his interactions with Jamie, but with William. So he recognizes that a lot, to the extent to which he understands that any sort of capitulation or apology from the Frasers he knows is hard won. When it’s given, it’s very meaningful, even if it is brief.

I think Sam [Heughan, who plays Jamie] really embodied that apology very well, and something that we worked on a lot in the script is: How do these two have a rapprochement? How do they apologize? What are they apologizing for? And how can Jamie’s apology be meaningful in the face of all the multitude of sins that he’s committed against Lord John? That was a very tough thing to figure out in the script, and Sam and I really worked on that.

TVLINE | Was Episode 9 your end of shooting, or is there more coming up? Will we see you in the finale?
I can’t give away any spoilers about the last episode.