The first season of Outlander: Blood of My Blood has been as full of romance, intrigue, and kilt-clad Highlanders as any Outlander fan could have hoped in the 2025 TV schedule, complete with an intimacy coordinator on board for when the story gets spicy. The prequel's four leads look enough like Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan that it's not too hard to buy them as the future parents of Outlander's Claire and Jamie, but the show especially nailed the casting when it came to Jamie Roy as Brian Fraser.
I spoke with the actor about the first season of the new show, and he shared the "spooky" first time that somebody in his personal life realized that he looks an awful lot like a dark-haired Sam Heughan. Fans certainly noticed the resemblance between Jamie Roy and the actor who plays his son on Outlander, but did anybody in his daily life make the connection before he was cast for Blood of My Blood? He answered that very question, saying:
You know what? It was funny, because not normally, but I remember before the casting had been announced, that it was Christmas time of 2023, so we were just about to go into production, and I was at a family Christmas party, and I met one of my uncle's and aunt's friends. He came up to me after having a few drinks, and was like, 'Has anyone ever told you you look like that guy from Outlander?' And I was like, 'You know what? Yeah, once or twice.' And at this point, they had no idea what I was doing in Scotland and why. I was like, that's just so funny.
A+ to that friend of the family, because the resemblance is pretty uncanny once you make the connection! Take a look at Blood of My Blood's Brian and Murtagh compared to Outlander's Jamie and Dougal:
Put red hair on Jamie Roy in the photo on the left or black hair on Sam Heughan in the photo on the right, and I'd say that they'd at least look close enough to be related! I'll admit that there are scenes in Blood of My Blood's first season that I did a double take at Brian, and the two actors even sound similar.
Throw in the fact that Heughan plays a character named Jamie on Outlander and an actor named Jamie plays his dad in the prequel, and it really feels like the stars aligned for Jamie Roy to land the key role in Blood of My Blood. He went on:
And then, of course, when it got announced, everyone started pointing out all the similarities and all this stuff. But yeah, that was the first time, I think, I'd heard it face to face. Spooky.
Jamie Roy isn't the only one of the Blood of My Blood leads with a resemblance to Sam Heughan or Caitriona Balfe, with Hermione Corfield's Julia looking (and sounding) especially like Outlander's Claire. In addition to Roy as Brian Fraser and Corfield as Julia Moriston, the time travel drama stars Harriet Slater as Ellen MacKenzie and Jeremy Irvine as Henry Beauchamp. While Slater is English, both she and Roy (a native Scot) honored their characters by wearing tartan and a kilt (respectively) for the Blood of My Blood premiere.
There are still a few episodes left of Outlander: Blood of My Blood's first season, and fans can rest easy on at least one front: the show has already been renewed for Season 2. As for the rest of Season 1, the remaining new episodes will air on Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on Starz, and be available streaming on Fridays on the Starz app as well as the Starz add-on to a Hulu subscription.
