Outlander season 4: Why something was changed from a script
As many of you out there know, the series author serves as a consultant on the show and she does have a chance to see everything from the outlines to the scripts to even the revisions. This is important for many different reasons, with one of the biggest ones being that she’s the only one with true advance knowledge of what will transpire in the final books. Therefore, she can tell them far ahead of time if some changes to the source material will interfere with something down the line. Moving into the fourth season it appears as though this has already happened on one occasion; luckily, she was able to step in and have the scripts changed before it messed something up with the books (and the show set itself for trouble along the way).
Speaking (per Entertainment Weekly) while at the panel, Gabaldon had the following to say:
“There was a particular scene in one of the season 4 scripts that I wrote back and said, ‘This will come as a big surprise to the people reading book 9.’ They changed it … I approach the scripts and the effort they put into them with great respect because I am a writer. I know how much work this takes. And I also appreciate the fact that they’re coming from a completely different place than I am. They don’t have anything like the scope, the time, the leisure to put something together, they’re very constricted. And also they’re not writing from my background, which is long and various. It’s very much a give and take. This is a collaborative process, and I’m honored to be a small part of it.”
The great thing about Outlander in general is that it truly is a collaboration. The writers work with Gabaldon, and in turn the writers also work with the producers and ultimately the cast. There’s an awareness here that everyone is on the same team, and that is to ultimately make the best show possible that also follows along the story of the books. There are naturally going to be changes, but that’s mostly just because there is limited real estate and it’s a different medium. You can’t do everything note by note when you are painting with some different brushes.
We will get a chance to see the end result of this collaborative process when Outlander season 4 premieres on Starz later this year. Hopefully, there will be some announcements in the near future.
Related – Check out the latest news from the show’s filming.
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