452 votes, 74 comments. It’s honestly astounding to me that the man who plays Frank Randall and the man who plays Black Jack Randall is the same… More on reddit.com

Tobias Menzies is an incredibly versatile actor. I’ve watched him in Eternal Law, Rome, Modern Love, The Terror, Manhunt, Persuasion, GOT, and many other films and television shows. He’s voicing several characters on the new PBS show, Ken Burns American Revolution. He’s such a great actor that I have no problem separating any of his roles from Black Jack Randall. He embodies every character he plays. More on reddit.com

BLACK JACK RANDALL—A STUDY IN SADISM Author’s Note: I wrote this following piece specifically for Tobias Menzies (the actor who plays Black Jack Randall—and Frank Randall— on the Starz television series), who’d asked me about the captain’s family background, social class, and general SOP. In the process of discussing Jack Randall’s background, psyche, and motives, though, I combed back through several years of discussions from the CompuServe Books and Writers Forum and compiled—with the invaluable help of Kristin Matherly, a born archivist—a number of bits and pieces regarding Jack Randall that I thought might be useful to both Tobias and Sam Heughan, who was going to have to deal with Jack Randall at close range during the filming of Outlander. I sent both the biography and the compiled discussion (in the form of a Q&A with additional commentary) to the show’s writers and production team, as well as to the two actors. The Randalls of Sussex are very minor aristocracy; the eldest brother, William,13 has a hereditary knighthood. They’re not a wealthy family, though they are landed gentry: enough money for the sons to be privately educated (Jack mentions his tutors to Claire, with regard to his civilized accent) and to purchase a captain’s commission for Jack. The sons took the traditional path: eldest inherits the estate, second son enters the military, and the third goes to the Church—Alex, the youngest brother, is a Church of England curate. There is a long-standing estrangement between William and his two younger brothers but not specified what caused it. It’s resulted in William refusing to help Alex financially and refusing to bring Jack’s body home to England when he’s killed at Culloden (not that this would have been very unusual; soldiers most often were buried where they were killed, or somewhere nearby). Alex is the one person in the world whom Jack cares for. (And if you want to go for an acting trifecta in the second season, Tobias, Alex looks enough like Jack that both Claire and Jamie think he is Jack when they encounter him unexpectedly in Paris.14) Don’t know if it’s in the script, but at one point in their prolonged (book) encounter, Jack says to Jamie, “Tell me that you love me, Alex.” People have been trying for years to figure out whether a) Jack knows that one of Jamie’s middle names is Alexander (he probably does, army paperwork being what it is), b) he means his brother (and what does that imply about his relationship with his brother, if so?), or c) he means a young Scottish prisoner named Alex MacGregor, who hanged himself a few months previously while in Randall’s custody (and following a few personal encounters with the captain).15 Jack is, as Claire notes, a sadist with a sense of humor—and thus particularly dangerous. He’s witty and fairly refined in manner, though not posh as such. Mm, the duke [the Duke of Sandringham]. I rather think he met Jack a few years before, when Jack was with a regiment quartered in London. We don’t know whether he’s presently commanding a garrison in the remote Highlands because he did something (or some things) in London that made his superiors nervous, or whether he chose to go there voluntarily, either because of his relationship with the duke (i.e., if the duke is indeed a secret Jacobite—and I kind of think he is16—he may have arranged for Randall to be transferred to a regiment in the Highlands (as distinct from a Highland regiment) for the purpose of keeping an eye on political developments there)…or because it was a better hunting ground for someone with his tastes. There are fewer opportunities in terms of women—though there are always a few prostitutes, these would be well known to whichever village they live in, and the virtuous women are almost all under the protection of men, or in groups of women. When he finds one unprotected—like Jenny Fraser—or alone—like Claire—he’s more than ready to take advantage, but that doesn’t happen often. But the opportunities offered to a man who’s more or less in sole charge of male prisoners, with no one to answer to, and mostly no one with the power to make real inquiries…that’s another thing. Anyway, he probably met the duke in London. The duke is straightforwardly homosexual (so to speak) in his personal tastes (Randall isn’t gay; he’s an equal-opportunity sadist), but very astute psychologically.He recognizes what Jack is and exploits that knowledge to use and control him. (We don’t know what little jobs Jack may have done for the duke over the years, but pretty sure there was some wet work, as they say these days.) The interesting thing is that the duke is cheerfully and coldly amoral. Jack’s not. He knows what he is, knows it’s despicable—but doesn’t struggle against it. He’s addicted to what he does and has grown a thick callus over what sensitivity he might once have had, in order to survive mentally. Outlandish Companion vol 2 , Diana Gabaldon More on reddit.com

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