They are now the closest of TV families, with the Outlander cast regularly only having loving things to say about each other.
But it's no secret that Outlander author Diana Gabaldon originally had other people in mind before Sam Heughan was cast as her character Jamie Fraser in the hit show.
She's since happily changed her mind, and only has glowing praise for her star, stating that Sam's transformation into Jamie during his audition was 'astonishing', and now like most fans it's probably hard for her to imagine anyone else in the role.
That wasn't always the case though, with the author making no secret of the fact when she saw his original casting pics (Sam was the first person picked for the original cast) she was less than happy, going as far as to describe him as "grotesque".
In 2015, she revealed to the List Magazine : “With Sam, he was the first person cast.
“They sent me his audition tape and they said, 'we think we’ve found Jamie'.
"This is four days after they started looking. I was amazed, because we thought it would take six months.
"They said they were sending me the audition tapes, but I was on the road, so I googled him on my iPhone as we were driving. At this point, he had relatively little film work and just a series of extremely bizarre still photos.”
The popular author, who first released her Outlander books in the early 90s, had someone like a young Liam Neeson (due to his role in Rob Roy) or Sean Connery in mind for Jamie.
Hilariously, she stated that after she had a look through Sam's photos she text the showrunners exclaiming: “This man is grotesque, what are you thinking?”
For years, fans have wondered what photo it could have been that caused such a reaction.
Well, after a fan retweeted a tweet from Sam in 2012 of one of his headshots, with the caption: "New headshot, What do you think?"
Diana tagged him writing: "You know when I said I looked at your photos and said, 'This guy looks grotesque, what are they thinking?' #yeahthisone".
The photo shows a young Sam with his trademark chiselled jaw line sporting dyed black hair and a v-neck T-shirt.
Thankfully, it's now become a running joke between the pair who have developed a very close bond over the six seasons of the Outlander TV show, with Diana even having a cute nickname for Sam.
What do you think? Do you think Sam looks "grotesque"?
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