Caitriona Balfe is set to return to screens in a matter of weeks as Outlander's seventh season will premiere in July.
The Irish actress has starred as Claire Fraser in the historical fantasy series alongside Sam Heughan since 2014. The pair have formed an incredibly close friendship after working on Outlander for almost a decade, as the penultimate season draws ever closer.
Despite being plagued by romance rumours focussed on her relationship with her co-star Caitriona, 43, wed Scots music producer Tony McGill in 2019. The couple share a son together and try to keep their relationship out of the public eye.
As we prepare for the end of Droughtlander, let's refresh our knowledge on the series' leading lady Caitriona. Here we take a look back at her glistening career and family life as we gear up for Outlander's penultimate series...
Model
Before starring in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, alongside Sam, the Irish beauty's career wasn't always going in the right direction.
Ahead of landing the role, she was a catwalk model and has recently spoke out about her time in one of the world's most demanding professions.
As a model Caitriona walked for several high-end designers in the early 2000s like Chanel, Valentino, Alexander McQueen and Givenchy but revealed the job made her "miserable". Caitriona told Vanity Fair that life as a model isn't always as great as it seemed.
“There was something about the theatricality of the runway shows and the event of it that I really loved,” she initially told Vanity Fair.
She said: “For the last couple of years I was miserable, really. It’s not exactly the nicest industry or the healthiest industry.”
“The shows were fun and exciting, but with catalogues, you’re just standing there like a clothes horse – literally,” Caitriona told The Guardian. “And you know, ‘This is not what I want to be doing with my life.’
“Modelling does two things,” Caitriona said. “It gives you a really, really tough exterior and then a really broken interior. Everyone’s experience is different, but I know my confidence and my self-esteem when I finished was in the toilet. Being in that for so long can leave you pretty messed up for a little bit.”
She added: “So many actors used to work in bars or used to be this or that, but you come with a lot of stigma when you’ve been a model. And that’s a hard thing to overcome, that being the first thing that people thought of me.”
Financial woes
Speaking to the Observer, she opened up on the months before landing her big job. “It was a total crapshoot,” says Balfe.
“I had done a few jobs, nothing of note really. I was living in LA and I was really struggling, actually, it was about four or five months since I’d had a job.”
For Outlander, Caitriona taped a few auditions but didn't hear anything so she went ahead and booked a holiday with her pals to India. But as luck would have it, she heard back from producers in the Indian Embassy and was told she needed to get to London immediately for a final screen test.
“So I signed on for six seasons at that point,” she continued. “I mean, you’re broke, you’ve got nothing else going on. My lawyer was like, ‘You do realise this is shooting in Scotland? You’ll be there for a year for the first season?’
"I was like, ‘A year’s great, a change of scenery, I’m not doing much in LA anyway.’ Yeah, I didn’t realise I’d still be there almost eight and a half years later.”
Outlander
There were a few speedbumps that popped up during the casting process, and almost caused Caitriona to miss out on the role of Claire. Speaking on the Hollywood Reporter’s podcast Awards Chatter, when she revealed how she thought she'd messed up the audition but was given a surprising second chance, she said:
"My manager had sent me this two or three-line logline and was like, ‘Here, tape this audition,’" the Belfast star explained. “It was such a thinly drawn description of the role, of the character.”
She added that she had no idea it was attached to such a hugely popular book franchise or that it even involved time travel.
“It was basically ‘a nurse.’ There was no personality description. I think it was, ‘a nurse, 1940s.’ It was literally two lines."
Pointing out that's how new she was to the scene at that point, she sent off the tape and hoped for the best but unsurprisingly, given the lack of detail, didn't hear back. But ultimately after a chance encounter, Caitriona was given a second chance to perfect the part.
With a new season coming out on Starz soon it's hard to imagine anyone else but Caitriona playing the titular role but she almost missed out due to not matching the physical description.
Claire Fraser is described as being 5 foot 6 inches tall with light brown hair curly and striking golden eyes, which is the opposite of Caitriona's 5 foot 9 height, tall slender body and dark brown hair. “Claire is often talked about as having a very plump rear end and I know they felt I was too tall and too skinny,” she admitted to RadioTimes.
Caitriona opened up about this worry to the Rolling Stone back in 2016 and said: “I think the initial reaction to my casting was like ‘Well, she's too tall, and she's too skinny, she doesn't have brown eyes and her hair's not curly!’
“The thing is, everyone has a subjective vision of what these characters are supposed to look like. When you're casting anything, hopefully they're looking for people who embody the character in an essence way rather than just the physical."
Friendship with Sam
After 10 years of filming Outlander together, Sam and Caitriona have become close friends. The pair frequently gush over one another in interviews as fans go wild.
Speaking on This Morning in 2022, Sam opened up about his close bond with Caitriona to hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. “Absolutely, we were very green and we didn’t really know where this was going to go,” he recalled.
“It’s going to be a decade by the time we finish the next season. So ten years together, we are like this… I don’t know, there’s this great friendship we’ve got."
“Much like yourselves,” Sam said referring to Phillip and Holly Willoughby. He added: “We’re sort of like this couple that have, sort of, grown together.”
In another interview, Sam didn't hold back his praise for Caitriona when asked on Good Morning America why the show is so popular. “Firstly, I mean, my chemistry with my co-star Caitríona Balfe, she’s an incredible actress," he began.
"We were two green actors, we didn’t have much experience, and we’ve been on this amazing journey together.”
In another interview, Sam told She Knows: “From when we started, she’s one of my best friends. She’s a great confidant, she’s a great actress, we spend a lot of time together. We’ve become so close.”
He continued: “And we’ve grown up together as well from the beginning where we knew nothing really, to now where we’re producers on the show…. Not only that, on set, she’s a great set partner, she’s generous, great humour, worst humour actually – because she corpses all the time.
"She’s strong, she’s thoughtful, she knows what she wants from a scene, yet she’s open to anything. You know what! Great in a basketball team, great in an American football team, she can get in there amongst the guys, she would knock you over… she’s the MVP of the Outlander team.”
Caitriona also gushed over her co-star to the publication and added: “I hope he knows how much I appreciate him. He’s such a gentle soul and he creates such an easy environment no matter where he goes. He’s kind to everybody. He is very funny.
"I’ve been really lucky. I’m sure I annoy the hell out of him every so often! We really, at this point, feel like family. He allows me the space to be myself. May roll his eyes behind my back! I hope what we do is allow each other to work each other’s thoughts out… without impinging upon each other. We give each other space.”
Family life
Caitriona is notoriously private about her relationships but tied the knot with Scots music producer Tony McGill in 2019. The couple were first linked in 2016 after being photographed at a party together, but neither has officially confirmed how their romance started.
There are very few photos online from her big day, which prompted fans to question her about her decision. However, Caitriona didn't take notice and responded clearly to a fan who wondered why she chose not to share pictures: “Cause that was for me, my husband, and my family. Sorry…but thank you for the love xxx.”
Two years after her wedding, Caitriona announced she had welcomed a baby boy with Tony in August 2021. Though she’s kept their first child’s name under wraps, Caitriona opened up about the couple’s feelings towards him in her long and thoughtful caption. “We are so grateful for this little soul ….that he chose us as his parents,” she shared.
“I’m in awe of him already and can’t help stare and wonder at all the possibilities of who he will become, where he will go and what he’ll do on the big adventure of his life.”
Caitriona's decision to keep her personal life to herself is supported after a few not so nice incidents with fans that she has opened up about. She told Vanity Fair that the recent birth of her son had caused her to become more wary of these overzealous fans.
"When you have a kid, you become really protective. I don't want those crazies — because that's what they are — I just don't want them talking about him," she said.
The former model also said fans called a church on her wedding day to ascertain whether her marriage to McGill was "real" and that some may have even hired private investigators to prove that Balfe and Heughan were dating.
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