EPISODE 209: JE SUIS PREST
WRITER:
MATTHEW B. ROBERTS 
DIRECTOR: PHILIP JOHN
With the clans moving toward war, writer Matthew Roberts says, he was thinking about how to make the episode personal for Claire. “The one thing the book doesn’t do is ever tell us what she went through in the war, mentally,” Roberts explains. “So I pitched that and Ron was like, ‘That might be a good idea.’ ” Roberts says the two decided that going back to the forties in Claire’s flashbacks could help illuminate her own harrowing experiences.
“Jamie’s a Highlander through and through, but he’s had training in France. As young kids, they’re brought up fighting and they’re always in a brawl. He’s a great fighter, with and without weapons. What stands out with him is being a soldier, so what he’s brought over from that is this structure and this discipline, and that’s what he’s teaching the Highlanders.”
“I’d already done a forties scene in ‘The Way Out,’ in the opening scene with Claire and Frank at the train station,” Roberts says. “Writing that scene, I loved it. I wanted to get back to that again, so I wanted to tell my war story.” Roberts ended up creating an original narrative about Claire meeting two American soldiers in the field, an experience that serves to parallel the anxiety the characters are experiencing in this episode.
“You don’t see much of the drilling, just Murtagh kicking, hitting, and screaming at them. There are some great comic moments. Great little vignettes of Murtagh drilling them or Dougal showing them how to kill a British officer with a big straw man that he is laying into in the most ferocious, crazed way.”
“Dougal is a fighter. He is not someone who wants to stand around talking about fighting. When he sees what Jamie is proposing regarding drilling them into shape, there is a sense that Dougal understands that the power has shifted. When he talks to Jamie, he’s talking to a different Jamie than he was at the end of the first season.”
Philip John was tasked with directing one of the most action-packed episodes of the season, and to his delight, the unruly Scottish climate was very kind to him and the crew. “The weather did precisely what we needed all the time,” he says. “We went up to the training camp for an opening shot across the hills into the Highlands. We had horses in a massive setup with lots of training warriors walking along through this landscape, so we just wanted it to be clear. Every time we visited that place, it was always in clouds. The day we shot it was immaculate, a blue sky, and it was just like heaven.
“We had a big, epic landscape, but the key to it was staying close to Claire,” John continues. As Claire navigates the camp, the environment drags her back to World War II. “Her flashbacks are actually flash-forwards to World War II, so there is a complexity there that I think you need to simplify. PTSD is characterized by awful flashbacks, emotional surges, fear, and panic attacks, so we did a lot of work in the training camps because there were lots of triggers for that there. For example, she walks past the muskets firing and it triggers a massive memory of an episode during battle in World War II, and suddenly you’re there. It was about trying to stay within her head as much as possible to witness the horror of what goes on with the two [soldiers]. All of the time, you’re trying to create a landscape in her head, because obviously this is all stuff that she is recalling in the past.”
John also got to reintroduce the bulk of the Highland cast to the narrative. “Angus, Rupert, Dougal, Jamie, Claire, and Murtagh: They all come back together in an uneasy alliance. They all work really hard together to get these [Fraser clansmen] trained. They are all farmers, so they have no real clue.”
“Claire going through the PTSD is very pivotal. After she has lost a child, this is a different Claire. Her confidence is knocked. I always felt Claire was such a hopeful character and that is why she could get through anything, because she had this belief that everything would eventually work out. That’s really been dinged. When we first met Claire, it was at the very end of the war. We saw celebration and then we saw her go to Scotland. We sort of saw Frank trying to deal with the effects, but she was there as his champion. So I don’t think she has ever allowed herself the time to contemplate what it is like, or what it is going to be like, to have to relive all that when you already know what you’re about to walk into. She’s seen horrible things before. I think this time she is going in with her eyes open and it is really playing on her mind. Until now it had been a lot of talking about a war. This was a really beautiful way of bringing it back down to reality and showing the audience this is what war means. This is what the characters that you love are about to step into.”
As Claire observes the recruits throughout the episode, Jamie comes to see what it’s doing to her, watching the slow walk to a war she hasn’t been able to prevent. Roberts explains the emotional confrontation: “Jamie’s reaction is, ‘I’ll do the right thing and send you home.’ She’s like, ‘Yes, but that’s the thing that would kill me worse.’ I think what gives the episode a nice balance is, Jamie has a job to do, yet he’s sensitive enough to know that his wife’s struggling with something. She’s struggling with something, but she knows that if she lets it play up too much, it’s going to hinder him from doing his job and it’s all going to go to shit. The balance of the couple is once again driving the story. If they can work as a team, usually good things happen. It’s when they don’t work as a team that bad shit happens.” John adds, “The very last shot of the episode, they look at each other and she says, ‘Je suis prest.’ She’s ready; she’s prepared.”
“The script reads, The jeep gets hit and turns over. As a stuntman, you get a bit carried away. You have to get reined back and remember what’s interesting is following Claire’s story. So we had four stunt doubles in the jeep, because they wanted to go fast. It was an authentic forties jeep, and no matter how [well] it was maintained, the brakes are still 1940s brakes. I employed one of the best stunt drivers we’ve got. On paper, the stunt reads quite simple: You drive down a country lane and the mortar goes off. Because it was quite a rocky track and we’re shooting at night, squibs going off on the bonnet of the jeep gave me those flashes.”