Caitriona Balfe Was Cast as Claire on 'Outlander' Just Days Before Production Started

There’s no other person other than Caitriona Balfe that we can imagine as Claire on Outlander.

However, it turns out that the -year-old actress was cast just days before production started on the hit Starz series.

Speaking to Collider, showrunner Ronald D. Moore opened up about early casting processes that brought us to Sam Heughan and Caitriona as Jamie and Claire.

“At the beginning, I said, ‘We’re going to cast Claire first because she’ll be the easiest to find,’” he recalled. “‘She’s a smart 20th-century British woman, and there are lots of them and we’ll find her quickly, but Jamie’s gonna be tough. How do you find the king of men? This heroic figure, this Scot?’”

Sam ended up being the first one cast for the show, with Claire still missing the actress who would play her.

“We found Sam, he was the first cast member,” Ronald revealed. “We just saw his tape and we went, “Oh my god, there he is.’ It was just like…boom.”

However, with Claire, it was a bit trickier: “We were really trying to find a very special quality. I always said that I wanted Claire to be really smart, and you had to see her thinking. And you know she had to be this really capable interesting person and she had to marry up really well with Sam.”

Then, just days before production began, Caitriona‘s self-made audition tape was discovered by producers, and after a screen test with Sam, Ronald knew she was the one.

“We didn’t find her until very late in the game, and she taped her own audition and sent it in,” he explained. “We just were like pretty certain from her tape that she was the one. And then when we saw the chemistry test, we were convinced.”

“Once we cast her she was on a plane to Scotland within a day and shooting like two days later,” he added. “I mean we were so close to the beginning of production it was really starting to scare everyone.”

Just recently, Caitriona hinted at a delay in the start of production for season six.