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'Written in My Own Heart's Blood' author Diana Gabaldon will appear on the Starz 'Outlander' TV series

Gabaldon said she will have a short amount of dialogue and will appear during the first season.

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Matt Sayles/Invision for Starz/AP
'Outlander' author Diana Gabaldon (second from l., with 'Outlander' executive producer and writer Ronald D. Moore, l., and 'Outlander' stars Caitriona Balfe, second from r., and Sam Heughan, r.) says she will appear on the TV adaptation of her novels.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

“Outlander” fans who watch the upcoming TV series might spot a familiar face.

Series author Diana Gabaldon, who recently published the newest novel in her series, “Written in My Own Heart’s Blood,” will appear on the TV adaptation of her books, said the author. She filmed her appearance early this year. 

Initially, said the writer, she was going to appear on the show as an extra.

“I said sure, that might be fun, and the fans could play ‘Where’s Waldo?’ when the show is released,” Gabaldon wrote on her Facebook page.

But then, she said, those working on the show e-mailed her and said it might be difficult for them and not very fun for her.

“If I were an extra, I’d have to stand essentially in the same place for three days … as you can’t be pulling extras out of carefully composed crowd scenes and screwing up the painstaking configurations that the director and director of photography … have worked out. As the producer put it, ‘The novelty wears off quickly,’” she wrote. 

So instead, Gabaldon said, she has a short amount of dialogue on the show. She couldn’t discuss very much about the details of her appearance but did reveal that “the lady in question [Gabaldon’s character] is at the [clan] Gathering, and the scenelet in question takes place in one of the galleries over the Great Hall.” 

In Gabaldon’s novel, World War II nurse Claire goes back in time to the eighteenth century, where she meets Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser and his family and goes to stay at Castle Leoch, the home of Jamie’s relatives the MacKenzies, where the Gathering takes place.

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