Stephen Walters as Angus Mhor and Grant O’Rourke as Ruper MacKenzie,’ and inset, Highland Cattle, on the Isle of Mull (Starz/Sony Pictures Television/Getty)
Cows to the resc-moo!
There were a number of dark and disturbing moments in the bold “Outlander” finale on Saturday night, but at Wentworth Prison, there was one memorable light one involving livestock.
A herd of cattle helped save Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). Thanks to Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) leaving a back door to Wentworth Prison unlocked, Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix) and the boys – Rupert (Grant O’Rourke) and Angus (Stephen Walters) – were able to use the hairy beasts to rescue Jamie.
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As they made their way down the corridor at Wentworth, the cows knocked down a door, trampled Black Jack Randall, and helped the Highlanders sneak in and get James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser out of there.
“That was actually one of my favorite days on set,” Grant, who plays Rupert, told Access Hollywood of filming with the cows.
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“I was slightly worried because, you know… you would be. You think, ‘These giant cows in a studio — this is going to be a terrible day for us. We’re going to get mauled to death,’ but it ended up just being hilarious,” he continued. “It was just one of the funniest, most surreal things I’ve ever done was chasing cows through a set, and me and Duncan and Stephen were just giggling like school girls between every single take. It was so absurd and so much fun to do as well.”
Less fun was trying to remember their lines around their animal kingdom co-stars.
“Trying to shout at cows in Gaelic that you can’t really remember was kind of funny. Yeah it was a great day,” Grant said.
The season finale sequence with the cows was a first for “Outlander” Executive Producer and showrunner Ronald D. Moore.
READ: ‘Outlander’ Finale: Ronald D. Moore On Those Harrowing Moments & Ending Season 1 With Hope
“It was weird to think of it this way, but I had never even worked with horses until this show, much less livestock,” the producer told Access.
And as a first-timer, Moore had plenty of concerns.
“We had stressed about it a lot in the lead up to that shoot. We were going, ‘OK, we have to design a set specifically for the cows, one that they won’t destroy. How is this going to work? What if they don’t behave? What if they go crazy? What if they just stand around and don’t want to walk?'” he said. “It’s like your mind is running through all these possibilities because there’s always a horror of anything with animals [always] has a lot of variables and you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get.
“But when the day came, the animals were troopers,” he laughed. “And they hit their marks. They did exactly what we wanted them to do, they didn’t give us any problems, the takes were easy and it was like, ‘Wow, that was simple.'”
Around 19 or 20 cows were used for the scene, and having them around required some additional building.
“We basically built a big stretch of corridor that was straight, with the prison walls in it that [were] reinforced so if they bounced into the wall, it [wouldn’t] just collapse like a normal set would.”
Ron said the cows would head down the corridor, make a turn and were guided “back around to the bottom of the prison wall.”
“So they were on kind of a big race track,” he continued. “Once you get ’em going, they would just run in a big circle for a while.”
And the cows left their mark in more ways than one.
“You were aware that there were cows around. I come from cow country originally, so to me it was sort of like, ‘Oh, this smells like home,'” Ron said.
“Outlander” Season 2 is in production.
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— Jolie Lash
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