SPOTLIGHT:

ANDREW GOWER AS PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART

As an actor, taking on the role of a historical figure is often both exciting and daunting—exciting to draw on real-life events to fuel the performance, and daunting because there’s the responsibility to authentically honor the person who existed. So it was for Oxford School of Drama graduate Andrew Gower, who needed to transform himself into one of history’s more misunderstood figures, Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The Merseyside, UK, native admits that, going into production on Outlander, he knew very little about Prince Charlie. “I knew of his name but never exactly where he fit into Scottish history,” Gower explains. “When it came into my mailbox, so to speak, it was an education on both fronts for me, especially the Jacobite history. It’s just fascinating.”

Gower says for Outlander he wanted to perform the character from the script but infuse in his performance the spirit of the real man. “Frank McLynn, who is a writer that specializes in Scottish history, is the only chap I could find who wrote a biography on the prince,” Gower reveals. “For preparation, and also during the whole shoot, [his book] was my, so to speak, Bible.

“I read his whole childhood up to the moment where he landed in Paris, and that’s where [my character] began. I never read ahead unless I knew it was actually included in the episode,” Gower emphasizes. “Ultimately, Outlander itself isn’t about Bonnie Prince Charlie; he’s just one of the people who Jamie and Claire come across. But it was helpful for me to feel my character throughout.”

Gower says his most surprising takeaway was how sad Charlie’s life was. “His relationship with his father is the most fascinating relationship I’ve ever read on paper,” the actor says. “It’s heartbreaking. You understand his desperation. [His efforts] are not just about having a purpose in society again. It’s actually about the love of his father, I would say.”

Despite that dejection Gower found running through his character, Outlander depicts a rather flamboyant era in the prince’s life as he took up residence in Paris. “This is a man who, from the moment you meet him, exudes desperation,” Gower says of his character. “But also he’s been brought up in the peacock environment of Paris and Italy, and fashion and religion. Unfortunately, through what happens in Paris, he’s not received at the courts with King Louis. He spent eighteen months in Paris as a kind of outcast. I think that is where I started bringing in snuff and alcohol and women, because there was a lot of time I felt his anger and guilt and regret. To have that much anger and regret at the age of twenty-three, twenty-four, I can’t imagine it. He’s clinging to Scotland when he’s got really no idea what it is.”

Gower says getting to chart Charlie’s infamous journey to Scottish soil, and then his utter defeat, was a fascinating journey to play. “One thing I do hope that people get from it are the moments where you just want to pick Charlie up and hug him and look after the guy. Sam and I were talking about that. He’s obviously a very strange and very tiring prince to deal with, but I do think somewhere in there there’s a respect on both fronts. At the very end of the piece, there’s a respect from me, not as a leader but as a human.”