He’s going from the Highlands to the suburbs.
Sam Heughan, best known for starring in “Outlander” as the dashing Scotsman Jamie Fraser, takes a darker turn in the steamy thriller, “The Couple Next Door.”
“It just felt like a completely different character,” Heughan, 44, exclusively told The Post.
“I liked the fact that he was ambiguous and you make assumptions about who [my character] Danny is in the first two episodes, and then you reveal more about his past and how complicated it is.”
Premiering Friday, Jan. 17 (9 p.m. on Starz), “The Couple Next Door” also aired in the UK (Channel 4). It follows teacher Evie (Eleanor Tomlinson) and her journalist husband, Pete (Alfred Enoch, “Harry Potter”), who move into an idyllic suburban neighborhood next to traffic cop Danny (Heughan) and his wife, yoga teacher Becka (Jessica De Gouw).
Evie and Pete are more buttoned up, and they’re surprised to learn that Danny and Becka have a non-monogamous relationship. Soon, the two couples get entangled with each other a little too closely, and events spiral out of control.
As a morally ambiguous man who rides a motorcycle, Danny is a far cry from the ultimate good guy that Heughan plays in “Outlander.”
“Jamie Fraser has been an incredible gift of a character and iconic one – one that’s lasted 11 years, eight seasons, 101 episodes. I think it’s rare to get a character like that. It may be a once in a lifetime thing,” said Heughan.
“But, the appeal for ‘The Couple Next Door’ was this morally ambiguous character who, on the surface, is a bit of an alpha male. But deep down there’s just some goodness to him, despite his bad choices.”
As different as the two characters are, both “The Couple Next Door” and “Outlander” involve Heughan doing steamy scenes.
“I don’t love or hate [doing sex scenes], it’s just a part of the story, I suppose,” he said.
“But certainly, I guess my time on ‘Outlander’ has given me a lot of education or experience in how to deal with that.”
“The Couple Next Door” even used the same intimacy coordinator he’d worked with in “Outlander,” Vanesa Coffey, Heughan explained.
Since the show filmed in Belgium, it was “a very different kind of production” that “hadn’t really dealt with those kinds of scenes before, or were immersed in sort of the protocol of it,” Heughan said.
“[Coffey] was really helpful in helping us explore what it is for four characters essentially to have a relationship.”
Regarding the part of the story where Danny and Becka have a non-monogamous relationship, Heughan said, “We talked quite a lot about it, because we wanted to get it right. We didn’t want to make it just something salacious. We wanted to show that this couple probably had worked through quite a lot together, and it could work.”
He added, “I think it is complex and difficult, but ultimately I think it’s probably the most loving that a relationship could possibly be. The fact that they would allow each other to seek pleasure just shows how strong that their bond is.”
