Tobias Menzies teases Black Jack's return in 'The Garrison Commander 

\'Outlander\': Tobias Menzies teases Black Jack\'s return in \'The Garrison Commander\'

In "Outlander" Season 1, episode 6, "The Garrison Commander," Tobias Menzies\' villainous Black Jack Randall returns to make the life of Claire Beauchamp even more difficult.

The episode contains a tense 20-minute-long conversation between just Jack and Claire that left this Zap2it writer  crushing on the sadistic Black Jack more than Scottish hero Jamie. The affable Menzies, who admits to have seeing said admission of admiration, took the time to speak with Zap2it about shooting his return as Black Jack, training to be a cat o\' nine tails expert and developing a trust relationship with his costars Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan. Read the full chat below.

Zap2it : A weird thing happened for me in episode 6: I realized I actually kind of love Black Jack, and I\'ve heard I\'m not alone. That probably isn\'t an emotion fans of the books are expecting to feel towards Jack. Was winning people over to the dark side before they really dive into Claire and Jamie in episode 7 part of your intention with these scenes in "The Garrison Commander"?

Tobias Menzies: [ laughs] I think it\'s kind of the responsibility of every actor to fight for their character and make their case, I suppose; make the argument for them. I think Jack\'s no different. He can\'t just be irredeemably bad. He\'s a human, and so what\'s interesting and I think rewarding is we get a chance to see a bit of what is behind Jack and what\'s going on and why he does some of the things he does. I think it\'s a nicely complex episode and really pays off. So yes, I think absolutely. For all the characters, we want them to be as three-dimensional as we can make them, and so this is definitely the episode where everybody gets to see his underbelly.

This episode also features a much longer scene with you playing Black Jack opposite Claire, instead of playing Frank opposite her. Can you talk a bit about switching gears with Caitriona and playing this much more fraught relationship?

It was a real sort of change of pace, in a way, and it\'s a real sort of change of pace for the season. We get this scene that\'s only about a page and a half in the books, and the writers have taken this moment, this meeting, between these two people and transformed it into an episode. It was exciting and also [I felt] a certain amount of trepidation, because if you\'re going to have most of an episode being two people in a room, you\'d better make it good. [ laughs] It\'s got to hold the attention of the audience. It felt like a really exciting challenge. 

We had some great writing to work with. I think there\'s a really strong dynamic between those two people, and I think that\'s one of the things that\'s successful in what we filmed. It feels like an interesting and complicated chess match between the two. They feel well-matched at times, so there\'s a sort of relish -- certainly for Jack -- meeting someone who can spar with him. Both those characters are negotiating a lot of different aspects. ... It has loads of payoff in this. I was really happy with how it came out. I think it\'s really good for the show to have those switches in pace and tone.

There\'s a 20-minute-long conversation scene between Claire and Jack, and it\'s riveting to watch. How did you and Caitriona rehearse that to keep the momentum up?

We did try to film fairly long sequences so we could get the flow and the movement between the two of us as much as we could. One of the payoffs for working over many months like this on a long-form drama is by the time we came to do that scene, Cait and I know each other well. We have spent a lot of time on set together, and all of that sort of marinates into the scene and makes for a really good kind of rapport. We were able to work quite quickly and trust each other. All that paid off. I also feel that the story also delivers us to a place where the audience is really ready for some real psychology, some chess, and characters revealing themselves.

I think it is. That\'s great to hear. That\'s what that relationship is about, I think. It\'s great to see Claire\'s character up against an equal as well. That\'s what\'s enjoyable about [Jack] as a character. He says the things most other characters won\'t say. He\'s incredibly blunt and honest and direct and all those things -- meaning that when he\'s around, interesting things occur.

You talked a bit about creating the trust relationship with Cait, but can you talk about creating that with Sam Heughan as well, especially now that we\'re starting to see some of the darkness between Jamie and Jack?

We\'re shooting the end of the book now, the stuff in Wentworth Prison. Through the season, there have actually been very isolated days I\'ve spent with Sam, so this has been the longest extended period we\'ve had [together]. It\'s been great. Sam\'s really a great actor, great to work with, and again there\'s a nice payoff from sharing this world together and working together for over a year. That all I think means that we\'ve had a really good rapport, and we\'ve needed it because it is very exposing and difficult stuff. I think -- I hope -- that we\'ve taken it to a pretty interesting place. I will be suitably unsettling to watch, I think. [ laughs]

I feel like that\'s a weird call to set: "Tobias, you\'re coming in to get lessons so you know how to use to a whip convincingly."

I know, I know. I had that lesson, actually. I was in a little corner of the studio and they mocked up a bit of wood with some foam wrapped around it. I did a bit, and it didn\'t look very convincing, and they taught me how to do it because, as you say, it has to look like I\'ve done it in the past and I know my way around a cat o\' nine tails, which Tobias doesn\'t. The peculiarities of the acting job are having to pick up things that you [don\'t know] and sell it, but it\'s also what\'s such fun about it.

If only they were shooting "Fifty Shades of Grey" now, you could go in with a really convincing audition tape.

[ laughs] I know. You think I would have had a chance?

Definitely. Back to "Outlander," I\'m curious how much you\'ve read of the books. I thought maybe you had stayed away from them since they\'re from Claire\'s perspective and have her bias against Black Jack. How did you decide to approach that?

I\'ve read the first book and a couple of hundred pages of the second book. We\'re very lucky to have a rather remarkable resource at our disposal with these very lovingly realized books that Diana [Gabaldon] has written. So absolutely, that was prime resource one. I suppose there is an actual bias that is often recounted by others who are probably not favorable to him. [ laughs] You get enough, about the world and what the writers are trying to conjure. And then the rest is about doing your own homework and building up the character and the world. Those were hugely helpful, the books.

"Outlander" airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Starz.

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