The star, best known as Jamie Fraser in the historical drama, is tackling another Scottish warrior — Macbeth at the RSC. He talks cocktails, failure and family
It’s an almost insultingly good bit of casting: Sam Heughan, the actor who made his name playing a Scottish warrior in the TV series Outlander, is making his Royal Shakespeare Company debut playing another Scottish warrior: Macbeth.
If that were all that Heughan were about he might be worried about typecasting, but not only was this Macbeth his idea, not only does he insist the two characters have little in common — perhaps it helps that this Macbeth is set in the early Nineties in a bar populated by the Glasgow underworld — but Heughan, 45, and preternaturally driven, has plenty more going on that has nothing to do with playing historical Scotsmen.
For a start Heughan owns a drinks company and, as of last month, a distillery too. He has just written a book, The Cocktail Diaries: A Spirited Adventure. He has ended his decade of playing the 18th-century Highland warrior Jamie Fraser in Outlander. And between finishing filming on the eighth and final series last November — it’s due out in early 2026 — and decamping to Stratford-upon-Avon for rehearsals, Heughan crammed in an ascent of Mount Everest too.
“I have a charity — My Peak Challenge — that encourages people to get outdoors,” he says, sweaty from a day of fight rehearsals at the RSC’s south London rehearsal rooms, but still looking as fit as a gym-hardened flea. Through the charity he met a mountaineer who encouraged him to join him on “a route that’s never been done by traditional trackers”. Well, you would expect no less.
Yes, he’s quite a guy, Sam Heughan. Could he be a contender as the next James Bond? “I’d love another crack at it,” he says. “I think I’m too old now, though.” Another crack? Yes, it turns out that in his mid-twenties, in short succession, he went up for the roles of Superman (losing out to Brandon Routh) and 007 (losing out to Daniel Craig).
“It was all top secret, the Bond people took me up to their boardroom, the casting director was there, Barbara Broccoli was there, Martin Campbell the director was there, there was a golden gun on the table, and they told me to do the scene there and then. It was very, very odd.” Not only did he not get the part, but they told him he “wasn’t charismatic enough”. After which he dyed his hair a darker shade of brown and started seeking out bad guy roles for a while, to “give myself some edge”.
Can he bring that edge to his Thane of Cawdor? Macbeth is his first stage role since his year playing the title role in the arena show Batman Live round the world in 2011 and 2012. Macbeth is much-produced — “It’s short, it’s a thriller, it’s accessible like an action movie” — but he is confident this claustrophobic production in a 200-seater can offer something different.
No pressure, but the last time the RSC put on Macbeth in its studio theatre, the Other Place, it was the celebrated 1976 production with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench. McKellen popped up when Heughan went on The One Show in August and reminded him that Macbeth’s best friend in the play is not Lady Macbeth, but “the audience. You confide in them, you tell them the truth, and that way you put the fear of God in them.” Heughan smiles. “He’s right. That was very sweet, very cool.”
They are embracing the 15-year age gap between him and his Lady Macbeth, Lia Williams, who is 60. The English actress is also the only non-Scot in the cast — or the only Sassenach, as Jamie would say of Caitríona Balfe’s character Claire in Outlander. (His drinks line is called Sassenach Spirits.)
He is considering making a special Macbeth cocktail, although whether that’s just for the cast or to sell at the RSC bar he doesn’t yet know. I suggest he could call it “Is this a daiquiri which I see before me?” He takes the joke generously, but wordplay aside, he wonders what’s Scottish about a drink based on rum. It will need to be something with Scotch in it, he says: maybe a twist on a Rob Roy “because I’m thinking of the sweet vermouth in it, like blood. And they are deadly.”
And cocktails fit with the staging. His Macbeth even drinks one at one point, although Heughan doesn’t recommend this one. “Absolutely vile.” After journeying up to Glasgow to visit his star, the director Daniel Raggett suggested they base their set on a place they had drinks in together. This Macbeth is a “made man” in the Glasgow underworld. “We talked about a medieval version, we talked about doing it on the front line of the war in Ukraine. It’s all been done before. And then we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we did it in a bar? Just before mobile phones so we don’t have to deal with that.”
He is not sure what acting job comes next, but whenever he has a spare moment he has his other life as a spirits supremo to attend to. At the end of the year he does a tour of bars in America. It’s a tough business, he says: the big boys can edge out “small independents” like him. Even ones who trade on their founder’s fame in their publicity material (his biggest market is America, which is also where Outlander is most popular).
He is serious about the business — and requested that Sassenach not be listed in the celebrity category when the online whisky shop Master of Malt started stocking it. The distillery in Galloway, near where he grew up, is a new acquisition, and has a staff of more than 20. He started with whisky, added gin and tequila and soon will add vodka.
He would always want to keep acting, though: it’s where he found himself. His mother, Chrissie, got him an assisted place at the Steiner School in Edinburgh where he played Bill Sikes in a production of Oliver! His first professional role was as a spear carrier in Macbeth at the Lyceum in Edinburgh where he was an usher. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). Straight after acting in David Greig’s play Outlying Islands, he was nominated for an Olivier award for the most promising performance in 2003.
He had made it. Oh, until, as with most young actors, the work dried up. Hence the bartending, intercut with stage and TV work and doomed trips in his early twenties to seek work in Los Angeles. Batman Live was a big break. It took him round the world, gave him confidence and, more tangibly, an American work visa. “Best job I’d ever done. It was crazy, amazing.” He stayed in LA for a while, came close to getting big jobs, but finally came back to London. “I’d spent all my money and was back to bartending.”
Then came the Outlander audition. Suddenly everything changed. “It’s the dream job, isn’t it? Not that I knew it would run this long. It changed everything. And I got to do most of the filming in Scotland.”
Heughan is famous to those who know the show, but little-known to those who don’t have one of the streaming services it’s been on — principally Prime Video in the UK, although it had a stint on Netflix. He says he might have been famous in his homeland were it not for David Cameron’s attitude to a show that depicted Scots fighting off English invaders.
“I believe the show was about to be sold to Channel 4. It was just before the vote for Scottish devolution [in 2014]. And if you read WikiLeaks and believe it, Cameron spoke to Channel 4 and asked them to delay it. You can see the emails.” Instead, eventually, Outlander went to Amazon. “And people didn’t really have Amazon at the time.”
Since Outlander started in 2014 he has made films — When the Starlight Ends, The Spy Who Dumped Me, Bloodshot, To Olivia, SAS: Red Notice and Love Again — but he knows it is Jamie Fraser who has defined him. He has homes in Scotland and LA, and has never felt he could settle down with such an itinerant lifestyle. He doesn’t like to talk about his personal life, but hints at a partner — “during Outlander I never had the time” — and that he is open to the idea of starting a family. “It’s something I’m maybe coming round to.” And when Heughan decides to do something, experience suggests that he will give it his all.
