Outlander star David Berry wishes they could've pushed his sex scene 'a bit further'

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Friday night's episode of Outlander, "A Hundredweight of Stones"

Lord John Grey (David Berry) and Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) are now officially husband and wife.

But if audiences thought their marriage would remain in name only, the latest episode of Outlander had even more surprises up its sleeve. As Claire and Lord John continue to mourn Jamie's (Sam Heughan) death, absolutely wracked with grief, they find a raw comfort in an unexpected place — each other.

Drunk and disturbed by Claire's own screams, John storms into her bedroom, going full Rhett Butler, and informs her, "I will not mourn him alone tonight."

"He was not yours to mourn," Claire hisses back, before the two claw at each other, clothing shredding in the process. We see flashes of skin and passion before it fades to black, and then, the sun rises the next morning with Claire and John waking up beside each other, having officially consummated their marriage.

It's an improbable and surprising moment, one that Berry says he is still trying to wrap his head around. "The essence of their conflict in that moment is the selfishness of Claire saying that Lord John has no right to his profound feelings of grief, and Lord John really needing someone in that moment," he notes. "He's so alone. No one's there for him, and he's shouldering all this grief and also trying to shoulder it for her. He reaches a breaking point where he is like, 'I just need someone to hold me and to get me through this.'"

Still, the scene relies more on implication than most Outlander sex scenes, leaving much of this intimate moment to viewers' imaginations (in the novels, the love-making is described with far more detail). "There were a lot of really difficult conversations," Berry admits, as to the choices they made in filming and editing the scene. "On the page, it was written a lot more. I was really interested to explore that a bit further, and I would've been happy to push it a little further. We ended up in a negotiated position where we didn't do that, and I do feel a sense of curiosity and even regret that we didn't challenge ourselves to do that a bit more."

For Berry, he's still not sure the scene really fully explains or allows the space to understand why this moment occurs between Lord John and Claire. Though he understands why they chose to limit what was depicted. "It was always going to be a weird sex scene," he adds. "I was excited by it because it was something that I'd never seen on TV before. The things that really excite me about Outlander are these moments of, 'What the hell? How do you inject a humanity into this?'"

"This was going to be my first Outlander sex scene," Berry continues. "For this to be my first Outlander sex scene was a massive challenge because there is consent, but what is the passion? What was written on the page is that there's an animalistic passion, and unfortunately, I don't really think that is translated to screen. There was definitely a passion component that I'm not sure that we quite captured in that moment. There is something that will forever haunt me — how do these two end up in a moment of intimate passion and union? It still confuses me, and I don't know that we completely solved it. "

Much of that is dealt with in the post-coital heart-to-heart that Claire and John share the next morning. They admit that neither of them were making love to each other, but instead to Jamie. Lord John also confesses that it's been 15 years since he last slept with a woman, while also revealing that Jamie once offered his body to him — an offer that Lord John refused because it mattered more to him to preserve their friendship.

Berry is far from finished pondering the scene and its motivations. "I'll forever be thinking about it as an acting challenge," he says. "The challenge that was set up in the episode is so cool and curious and a cool thing for the series to contend with. It is a real pivot moment for these characters. It will have massive ripple effects moving forward."

The first ripple being the episode's final revelation that (surprise!) Jamie isn't dead after all. He never ended up sailing aboard the Euterpe, and despite being hotly pursued by redcoats, he's come to Lord John's house in Philadelphia to clear up the rumors of his demise.

But there's not much time for rejoicing (or owning up to the night shared between Claire and Lord John), as Jamie accidentally spills the beans that he is William's true father while William (Charles Vandervaart) is in earshot. And then, a troop of redcoats storms the house looking for Jamie, which forces him to pretend to kidnap Lord John at gunpoint.

"How does he deal with that?" Berry posits of Jamie's seeming resurrection. "He doesn't, because he's thrown immediately into a situation where William finds out that Jamie's his father, so he doesn't even have a moment to deal with that. The reconciliation of Jamie returning is going to play out in episodes to follow and maybe even series to follow. We're really going to unpack it as we see the impact of Jamie's death and return on these characters."

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But first, Lord John probably needs to focus on William, who feels utterly betrayed by the lie of his paternity. "Lord John is very upset that Jamie has been so reckless," Berry notes. "This is something they've been very careful to manage the entire time. It is a huge bombshell. For it to have come out in that way is the worst possible imaginable thing to happen to Lord John and to William."

"Although Lord John is perhaps misguided in his own responsibility for the way that this happened," Berry astutely adds. "Perhaps he should have anticipated that this would be the result of keeping a secret. If you don't have an honest relationship with somebody, then secrets have a way of finding themselves out, and then you have to deal with the repercussions of keeping a secret from somebody."

Repercussions that we're certain will echo throughout the rest of the season. Outlander airs at 8 p.m. on Starz on Fridays.