Caitriona Balfe on Boxing Training for ‘The Cut’ & Saying Goodbye to 'Outlander’ (Exclusive)

Caitriona Balfe chatted with “Extra” about “The Cut,” her new psychological thriller film with Orlando Bloom. 

Caitriona plays Caitlin, the partner of Bloom’s Boxer character, who comes out of retirement to vie for a championship title and goes through a grueling and unsanctioned weight-cutting program. 

She said of the role, “The character is very different to Claire,” referencing her work on “Outlander,” “but I do think these are two very damaged people who found each other. And they are trying to make each other's lives and their own lives better.”

As for Caitlin and Boxer’s “tortured love story,” she shared, “Caitlin has been through recovery and has perhaps more tools than Boxer has at knowing how to live a better life for herself, and Boxer is still very much sort of holding on to these ideas that one thing is going to solve his problems. And he's got this dream that he had to give up on that's haunted him… It's such a painful thing when you watch somebody you love be haunted by something and be destroyed by the loss of something. And of course, it's about much more than the fight or the kind of title he never got. And that's what Boxer doesn't realize, but Caitlin does.”

Balfe confessed that Caitlin “does not always make the right decisions” and “enables” Boxer, but it is “because she loves him.”

Caitriona raved over co-star Orlando taking a risk with this project and doing something transformative — quite literally, because he had to drastically drop weight and then regain it! 

“I was just so impressed by him in so many ways,” she said, adding, “He succeeded so brilliantly in this.”

Getting into his transformation, Balfe recalled meeting him a month or so before training and then seeing him again three or four weeks later. 

“It was, like, shocking,” she said, adding they worked in reverse chronological order. “He had dropped 30 lbs. He was just so cut… He looked just amazing, and the amazing prosthetics they had done and all of that, but it was so hard for him, you know, to have that reduced calories at that point, and he was reducing even fluids to a certain point. He was doing it under the supervision of someone. But then to film for 10, 11 hours, be in every scene, all of that… you’re full of concern.”

She added, “And then halfway through filming he’s, like, double pasta lunches and ice cream and all of that to put it all on, by the time you get to the end of the movie and he’s like regained 30 lbs., which was wild.”

She also dished on doing boxing training and the physical and mental demands of the sport. 

Balfe shared, “I loved it, and I got so into it, and I still keep it up when I can… I found the thing that gets me to the gym.”

The star went on, "I had no idea how mentally focused you need to be when you’re boxing... it was the mental demands of the training… and how sharp and focused you need to be it’s amazing."

Plus, she reflected on the upcoming eighth and final season of “Outlander” and saying goodbye. 

“Season 8's done and dusted and that's the end,” Caitriona said. “It's wild because obviously we finished filming that about a year ago… It's sort of waiting for it to come out and for everyone to see it. So, in many ways, it sort of feels like we've said our goodbyes a lot, but um, there's this whole other phase of it to go.”

The actress added, “It was the most incredible journey. It changed my life. I made and, you know, met lifelong friends and, I grew up on that show in many ways. You know, it was over a decade of my life.”

She also spoke about the upcoming adaption of “Sense and Sensibility.”

Balfe was cast as Mrs. Dashwood, and shared, “I'm so excited… Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esme Creed-Miles are amazing in their roles and Georgia Oakley our director she's fantastic.”

She went on, “There have been such good adaptations of this already, but the last one was 30 years ago,and I think every new generation has their own sort of perspective on it, and I'm just so excited about Georgia’s because she's really an incredible talent and she's got such an artistic vision.”