Nowadays, no one can imagine ignoring Sam Heughan is. The world knows him as the handsome red-handed Highlander Jamie Fraser on Outlander, and he will be acknowledged.
But before he landed that role, Heughan was just another working actor hopping from audition to audition, even as some of his colleagues made it big. That included fellow Scotsman Richard Madden, who left Sam Heughan feeling “hurt” after not recognizing him at an event.
Not cool, Madden, not cool at all!
When Richard Madden didn’t recognize his drama schoolmate Sam Heughan
In his memoir Waypoints: My Scottish Journey, Heughan recalls that he and Madden both graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, formerly the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, in 2007. They had met a handful of times and had some mutual friends.
Both Heughan and Madden attended an event hosted at the V&A Museum in London, but were in very different positions at the time. Madden had just started playing Robb Stark on Game of Thrones and was on the rise, while Heughan was working as a waiter at the event. “I’d been tasked with holding a tray of the guests’ drinks while they nipped out for a puff, and I was gossiping with a colleague when I looked up and saw Richard Madden walking over to place his gin and tonic on my tray,” said Heughan. He started to greet Madden but then realized something. “The words caught in my throat. He hadn’t recognized me, even though we had met a few times. My ex-girlfriend had lived in his Glasgow apartment.”
That one has got to hurt! Although Heughan doesn’t have any hard feelings. “It wasn’t Richard’s fault, he’s the loveliest fellow and we’ve met since, but the fact that he was my peer and I wanted to be on the other side of the serving tray hurt,” he remembered. “The whole time, I just gripped tightly to the tray, my knuckles turning white, hoping the ground would swallow me up.”
After that, Heughan “headed for the closest exit” feeling “ashamed and embarrassed.” Luckily, that feeling wouldn’t last, and soon enough he would find himself as the lead in a beloved series that millions of people would watch and obsess over.
