Outlander's seventh season spanned more than a year, with fans left hanging for months to learn the next stages of the various characters' journeys throughout time. While most of the action was set in 18th century Scotland and the future United States, Brianna's main storyline kept her in the 1980s and separated from her longtime castmates. It presented a set of challenges that actress Sophie Skelton described as "very fresh and different," so it's only fitting that she's set to receive an impressive award shortly after the Season 7 finale aired in the 2025 TV schedule.
Sophie Skelton's SCAD TVfest Award
Sophie Skelton will receive the Lumiere Award at the upcoming 13th annual SCAD TVfest in Atlanta, as part of the Savannah College of Art and Design's three-day event from February 5-7, celebrating the best in television and streaming.
The actress is undoubtedly best known for her work as Brianna on Outlander, and that role alone has required a lot from her over the years with millions of fans watching her perform opposite Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan, Richard Rankin, and more. She also has one more full season left, as Outlander's eighth will also be its last on Starz.
She's also set to make her mark on the big screen in Row, an upcoming British thriller following a woman washing ashore in a bloody rowboat after mysteriously reappearing. All in all, the weeks following Outlander's Season 7 finale seem like a fitting time for her to receive an award for her career.
SCAD TVfest has other awards to bestow as well, including the Lifetime Achievement Award for Shōgun's Hiroyuki Sanada, the Impact Award for Clean Slate's Laverne Cox, the Rising Star Award for Percy Jackson and the Olympians' Walker Scobell, the Variety Showrunner Award for Stranger Things' Duffer Brothers, and more. SCAD's Lumiere Award was most recently given in the fall to Daisy Ridley and Jharrel Jerome at the 2024 Savannah Film Fest, attended by CinemaBlend's Sean O'Connell.
2024 TVfest award winners included Fellow Travelers' and White Collar's Matt Bomer with The Hollywood Reporter's Trailblazer Award, George Lopez (with daughter Mayan by his side) with the Lifetime Achievement Award, and Joel Kim Booster of Apple TV+s's Loot with the Rising Star Award.
As for why now truly is a fitting time for Sophie Skelton to be honored, read on for what she told us about Brianna's arc in Outlander Season 7!
Sophie Skelton's "Very Fresh And Different" Challenges In Outlander Season 7
Spoilers ahead for the Season 7 finale of Outlander. After Roger and Buck left the '80s to go back to the 18th century, Brianna was short on people she could talk to and confide in. In fact, other than Chris Fulton as Rob Cameron – a.k.a. her nemesis of Season 7B – Bree was generally either alone or with kids Mandy and Jemmy. It was certainly a change for Sophie Skelton, who previously worked mostly with Richard Rankin as Roger, with Bree and Roger's reunion not coming until nearly the very end of the season.
When I spoke with Skelton in the fall as part of Starz's Outlander press junket, I had to know: what was her experience in Season 7B when she was much more isolated from her usual cast mates? She shared:
It's funny that you ask that, because the season felt very fresh and different just because of the time period that we were in. Also filming with different children. Obviously, our kids are older now when we're in the 1980s, so we had different actors for Jemmy, at least, and for Mandy. And I was also very fortunate that I got to work with some new actors like Chris Fulton, who played Rob, and very different sets. So it felt very different from anything that we'd shot before on the show.
"Different" clearly doesn't mean "bad" for Sophie Skelton, who pointed out the perks of telling a fresh story in the most modern of the various Outlander timelines. That doesn't mean she never encountered the other adult cast members, though, as she went on to recount an encounter with Caitriona Balfe, who of course plays her on-screen mom Claire:
But it was funny because Caitriona came in one day after a scene that I was doing. She was directing one of the Outlander Untold episodes – one of the scenes, one of the deleted ones – and she was like, 'Gosh, I've just seen you with the kids all day, and I've just realized how isolated you've been this season.' And it was true. It was just a really different dynamic to be working with children all the time instead of adults.
In the back half of Season 7, Brianna had more time with Mandy than Jemmy, since Jemmy had been kidnapped. When the whole family sans Roger was reunited, she decided that it was time for the rest of them to go find him rather than wait for him to come back. And based on Skelton's comments, she seems to have no regrets about spending so much more time with much younger co-stars than usual. She continued:
But it was a good lesson, and it's good to get to know your kids a lot, and I think [it] did come through on screen how much they and I had a trust between us. And I think that that was really important for the second half of [Season] 7. So it was definitely a niche experience for me on the show, but I think it sort of transposed onto the screen for the story, which was great.
Outlander will return for an eighth and final season, expected to debut in late 2025 or early 2026, but Starz has not yet announced a premiere date for when Sophie Skelton et al will reprise their roles for one last batch of episodes. She'll receive the Lumiere Award much sooner, with SCAD TVfest running from February 5-7 this year in Atlanta.
