This week’s Outlander formally invited thee to Rachel and Ian’s Quaker wedding, a simple ceremony held on the eve of Ian’s official entrance into the Revolutionary War. So of course TVLine had to talk to Izzy Meikle-Small and John Bell, who play the bride and groom, about Ian and Rachel’s sweet-and-sexy episode. Read on as they tell us about what spirit was really moving the cast during the marriage scene and what Friends has to do with the couple’s wedding night.
TVLINE | Congratulations on the wedding! It was a lovely affair. So lavish, so floral, so stunning.
JOHN BELL | [Laughs] Yeah. They really went all out on the decorations.
IZZY MEIKLE-SMALL | They spared no expense.
TVLINE | Tell me about sitting around, waiting for the spirit to move someone during the ceremony. Did anyone get a case of the giggles?
MEIKLE-SMALL | [Mock seriously] It was very serious. I don’t know what you mean. It was incredibly serious.
BELL | Yeah.
MEIKLE-SMALL | [Laughs] No, it was very silly, and it was the day before we broke for Christmas [2024], and everyone was, like, thinking about the Christmas party we were going to in two hours’ time. So, the Christmas spirit moved us more than the actual spirit, I would say, but we had a good time. I mean, we’d done that basically all day, because there was so much coverage to get. Yeah, we had a little giggle.
BELL | We had a whole day to film it. It was actually quite nice. It was a nicely paced day, and everyone got their little moment for the camera. So, it was just one of those very nice, relaxed kind of days on the show, which made the whole experience really fun. Yeah, there’s a bit of pressure on it being Ian and Rachel’s wedding. But because it’s so stripped back, and it’s all about the speeches and the words, we could really just relax and enjoy the day.
TVLINE | Did you work with Vanessa Coffey, the show’s intimacy coordinator, for the wedding-night scene?
BELL |Yeah, we had a lot of time to rehearse it and get it right. So, about a month, maybe, before we’re supposed to film it, we started rehearsals with Vanessa, and that really began with sitting down round a table and discussing what we wanted to do, what our characters were feeling in that moment, what was important for us to show. With Vanessa by our side, we felt really safe and able to navigate this scene the way that we wanted to.
Having someone like Vanessa, who is so good at her job and can see things in black and white, so that there’s not as much levels of, ‘will this happen? will this not?’ really meant that the day we went in to film it, yeah, we were a little nervous, yeah, we might have had a little tipple [Laughs]. But it ended up actually being a really enjoyable afternoon, where Izzy and I got to play and have fun with the scene. [Editor’s note: This interview was conducted via Zoom, with Bell and Meikle-Small in separate locations. At this point, Bell’s video froze, but that wasn’t immediately apparent.]
TVLINE | I thought he was just being very thoughtful for a minute!
MEIKLE-SMALL | [Laughs] All right, well, I’ll comment.
TVLINE | Go for it, Izzy.
MEIKLE-SMALL | We really wanted to discuss what was important for Ian and Rachel, and their character progression, but also for me and John, about what we thought was right. We came up with this idea with Vanessa about, a present being unwrapped. It’s not the grand reveal that’s the exciting part: It’s peeling back all of those layers. Rachel is religious, she’s a Quaker. So in some ways, she would have been a little bit scared. But also: Rachel isn’t the type to be scared. So, it was kind of trying to define the parameters of their relationship [in a way that was] fun, loving and playful, rather than it necessarily being this kind of super, like, lust-driven scene.
TVLINE | Right.
MEIKLE-SMALL | I mean, obviously, there’s lust there! … We brought in, with Ian, the idea that Ian’s trying to reassure Rachel and make sure that she’s not nervous — even though I don’t think she is nervous. But you know, he’s worried that she might be. So he does lots of things to try and make her laugh.
And I think that’s really lovely, because so often, we see sex scenes where it’s like, one, two, three, done… This is way more about the build-up, which I think is really nice.
TVLINE | It also occurs to me that she’s a nurse who’s been helping Denzell for a while now. She’s acquainted with the male body, is all I’m saying.
MEIKLE-SMALL | Yeah, and she loves Ian, and she’s a woman of acertain age who’s not done anything in that realm. I’m sure she was pretty ready to do what she wanted to do, and I think that she’s been waiting for the opportunity. Abd now she’s got it, and she’s pretty pleased with herself, I think.
TVLINE | Did you have any idea that she had that much hair? Like, when she takes it down, there’s so much hair.
MEIKLE-SMALL | It was all mine. That was all my hair.
TVLINE | That was you?! I was sure it was a wig because it was so luxurious and fell so beautifully!
MEIKLE-SMALL | Yeah, no, it was mine. [Laughs] I complained about wearing my bonnet so often, and John always teases me for wearing bonnets. So, when it was, like, written into the script that she takes the hair down, we were like, “We need that to be a moment.” And Vanessa was like, “I totally agree.” The way we shook the hair out, we were joking, it’s like that moment in Friends where Ross’s cousin has the slow-motion, hair spin. [Laughs] We were using that as the inspo. So I’m glad that landed.
BELL | [Re-enterting the chat] Sorry! My whole Zoom crashed. [We catch him up.]
TVLINE | Do you think being married makes Rachel and Ian think about everything that’s coming up — the war and the potential separation and the fear — in a way that’s different from how they might’ve regarded it when they weren’t husband and wife?
MEIKLE-SMALL | Maybe, in the sense that when you’re in love but you’re not married, there’s less certainty there. Like, when Ian left for Scotland, Rachel obviously loved him still then, and she was very much hopeful that he would return. But if he didn’t, she would have had to eventually move on with her own life. Whereas I think when you become married, especially in that time, you’re thinking about maybe having children, and where you’re going to live, and where are you going to move after the war. You’re envisaging this whole future. And so, if Ian was to not come back, that whole future would be ripped away from her.
BELL | From Ian’s perspective, he’s a very loyal character. When he makes that commitment to somebody, that is him saying, ‘til death do us part, basically. And this isn’t his first time, you know? There’s a whole life that he’s lived with this other woman, and that wasn’t his choice to leave. He was told to leave. So, I think this time ‘round, he makes this pledge with all seriousness, knowing the consequences of what it could turn out to be, but still wanting to make sure that, concretely, he was saying to her, ‘You’re stuck with me until you tell me to go.’
I think it makes a big difference for them. I think it shows their commitment to each other, and it’s just lovely.
