Outlander filmed Scotland as North Carolina

Season Four relocates the story in part to colonial North Carolina.

Filming Scotland as colonial America was largely a logistical decision. Few UK-based TV series in fact shoot in the US as the country’s locations can often be replicated in Europe.

The Outlander team also has the considerable advantage of its own dedicated studio space in Scotland at Wardpark Studios near Glasgow, which was created specifically for the show.

“We have our crew [and] our big studio here, so it was better to base here and remain here,” said Matthew B Roberts, an executive producer on Outlander, in comments to Radio Times.

“Believe it or not, Scotland plays for North Carolina quite well.

“[The studio] is a rare thing to have because it’s ours. This is all ours. Every stage is ours – we have prop building, we have plasterers; we have everything we need that we can [use to] create this world.”

In the final edit of the season, Scotland’s landscapes were combined with stock footage of the real North Carolina and additional material shot in parts of Eastern Europe.

The series features Native American characters, who were flown to Scotland for the shoot from the US and Canada.

Outlander has not always been filmed entirely in Scotland, with the previous season having used South Africa as a stand-in for Jamaican story settings.

The show has been commissioned for at least two more series, with Season Five scheduled to start filming at the end of next month.

Wardpark Studios remains one of Scotland’s best-developed studio facilities in a country that does not yet have any large-scale purpose-built stages. The latest adapted studio is being planned for Port of Leith in Edinburgh and last month Screen Scotland invited development proposals for the site from private companies.

See KFTV's production guide for more on filming in Scotland.

Images: Starz Entertainment/David Bloomer