“In some ways, it sort of feels like maybe we’re waiting for the next season to start. You know, we always have these hiatuses, but I feel like I’m slowly saying goodbye to her.
“It’s sad, but she’ll always be with me,” she added. “I mean, you play a character for 11 years, it sort of becomes part of you and part of your life.”
As for what fans can expect from the final stretch, Balfe teased that the ending of the series is “beautiful”.
She said: “I just really hope that they love the last season and that they see that it’s a fitting farewell to something that we’ve been so grateful that they’ve supported us for so long with, you know.
“It’s a beautiful season, and I think the ending is really beautiful. And I hope that they think so too.”
Previously – while filming was still ongoing – Balfe had revealed that certain parts of the script were being kept under lock and key until the very last minute.
“I think they’re still keeping parts of it to themselves until the very day that we film it,” she told Collider. “It’s kind of interesting, I can’t give any spoilers because I don’t know.”
Interestingly, author Diana Gabaldon – on whose books the series is based – previously warned viewers not to expect a final season that closely matches up what will happen at the end of her novels.
Responding to a fan question on her Facebook page, she said: “There’s only so much I can say about the show, but what I can say is that it really won’t resemble the end of the book series.”
In The Amateur, Balfe plays a character who is somewhat different from Claire: a CIA asset called Inquiline, who forms a strong alliance with Rami Malek’s lead character Charlie Heller throughout the film.
And Balfe said she greatly enjoyed the experience of doing some “imaginative backstory work” – even though there wasn’t “a huge amount” to go on.
“I kind of am a bit nerdy about stuff like that,” she said. “There’s Legacy of Ashes [by Tim Weiner], a great book which is sort of all about the CIA and their different projects that they’ve had over the years, and how some of them went wrong, and about some of their spies and all of that.
“So I sort of.. I’ve read that before, but Inquiline sort of lives outside of that,” she added. “She is a bit of a lone wolf, which is kind of interesting. And I think I went with more that she is somebody who’s working in a kind of new way.
“I mean, yes, you know, her background sort of comes from that world, but what she’s doing is sort of on her own terms and in her own way, which is quite nice.”
