For more than a decade, Sam Heughan has been playing Jamie Fraser on Outlander, which just had its season 7 finale that left fans hanging off a cliff with a huge revelation. Before anyone could miss the show though, Heughan’s suspenseful new limited series, The Couple Next Door aired right after. If you’re expecting Jamie Fraser to be your friendly kilt-wearing, honest next door neighbor, this is not this show. Heughan plays Danny, husband to Becka, played by Jessica De Gouw. They have an open marriage, and Danny spends most of his time lying to his wife, and getting involved with their next door neighbor, Evie, played by Eleanor Tomlinson. Jamie Fraser would never. But you won’t want to miss Heughan’s performance in this new show, which hits all the right spots, with a talented cast to boot.
In a video interview with Heughan and De Gouw, Heughan chatted about Outlander, their thrilling new show, and working with their on-screen neighbors Tomlinson and Alfred Enoch. The Couple Next Door is a six-episode limited series on Starz that is the perfect amount of suspense, relationship drama, and lies (a whole lot of lies) with Heughan getting to stretch his legs in this century, and not being stuck in the 1700s. He trades riding a horse for riding a motorcycle, and leaps from complicated situation to complicated situation thanks to his character’s own making. Neighbors who swap partners, creepy neighbors with telescopes, crime, surprise children, the show has a little of everything for everyone.
The Couple Next Door is best described as a “psychosexual thriller” according to Enoch. There are quite a few steamy scenes between all four cast members, and especially Heughan and Tomlinson. Heughan is no stranger to love scenes. In fact, he and his longtime Outlander co-star Caitríona Balfe put their show on the map 11 years ago with their love scenes as Jamie and Claire Fraser.
Heughan and Balfe have opened up about their evolution with doing love scenes in the last 11 years. For the first few years, the two had no intimacy coordinator and had to navigate love scenes on their own together, which both have confessed looking back wasn’t easy.
In season 6 of Outlander, Heughan and Balfe, also executive producers on the show, brought on an intimacy coordinator to work with the cast. “Before Vanessa (Coffey) joined, we were kind of like yeah we should do this for the younger actors, you and I will probably be fine, but having worked with Vanessa now, I wish we’d had her from the very start,” Balfe told us at the end of season 6. And now with The Couple Next Door, the making of a love scene looks quite different than it used to according to Heughan. “The industry has changed so much and definitely from the beginning of Outlander to where it is now. I was lucky to meet Vanessa Coffey, who’s our intimacy coordinator on Outlander. We asked her to come and work on this just to help facilitate, build a common language for everyone. Even for our Belgian crew, for them it was quite a new experience. Yeah, it was fun. It was real fun. I think it’s also down to this amazing cast who trusted each other.” Heughan goes on to explain how they had to deal with intimate scenes that involved all four of them.
Heughan and De Gouw confessed a certain dancing scene on the beach, which looked like all fun and games, was quite different when they were filming it. He jokes, “I’m such a good dancer.” De Gouw chimes in about his dancing, “That was effortless! I mean it was freezing cold that day. We had massive coats until action and then it was dreamy, warm, we’re fine, we’re fine.” It was not fine. Heughan adds, “The reality was we were freezing to death.” Shivering or dancing, we’ll never know. Heughan chatted about both Outlander and his new show at event recently in New York City.
The Couple Next Door is airing now on Starz, and new episodes will drop on Fridays. And of course, all seven seasons of Outlander can be watched and re-watched. Check out the Outlander cover story with Heughan, Balfe and their co-stars.
