Sam Heughan Just Traded the Highlands for High-Rise Espionage, and His New Partner Is Viola Davis

The kilt is officially off. Sam Heughan, who spent nearly a decade playing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser on Outlander, has landed his biggest post-Outlander role yet, and it could not be further from the misty moors of Scotland. According to Deadline, the actor will star opposite EGOT winner Viola Davis in Ascent, a Paramount+ thriller set in the shadowy world of corporate crisis and damage control. It is a pairing nobody saw coming.

Meet Conal: the role that could change everything

Heughan is set to play Conal, a top agent at Ascent Ventures, the shadowy firm at the center of the series. The official character description reads like a warning label: “Lethally charming and a natural chameleon… Conal uses social cunning and ruthlessness to get the job done and always gets a thrill out of completing a mission.”

That is a sharp left turn from Jamie Fraser. For eight seasons, Heughan built his name playing one of television’s most honorable heroes, a man whose word was his bond. Conal sounds like the photographic negative: a man who thrives in deception, who reads a room the way Jamie read a battlefield, and who genuinely enjoys the work. Gone are the plaid, the sword, and the 18th-century brogue. In their place: tailored suits, glass-walled boardrooms, and a character whose weapons are secrets, stock prices, and carefully leaked scandals.

What we actually know about Ascent

Ascent is billed as a character-driven thriller set in the dangerous world of global corporate crisis and damage control. The premise has a delicious hook: when billion-dollar companies face scandals that could destroy them overnight, they call Ascent Ventures, a firm of fixers who make problems disappear by any means necessary. Paramount+ is clearly going all in on star-led originals: the streamer also just landed Daisy Ridley to headline its reimagining of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Davis will play Catriona Vail, an elite corporate fixer whose ruthless skills have made her indispensable to billion-dollar clients. Her world detonates when her estranged daughter is suddenly in danger, forcing her to weaponize every dark skill she has spent a career perfecting.

Here is where it gets interesting for Heughan fans. Conal is one of Ascent’s top agents, which means he works for, or at least alongside, Davis’s character. The reports have not said whether Conal and Catriona will be allies, rivals, or something far messier in between. A fixer with a daughter in danger and an agent who thrills at completing missions by ruthless means is either a dream team or a collision waiting to happen, and the show clearly plans to mine every drop of tension from it.

Behind the camera, the pedigree is strong. Ascent is created by John Logan, the writer-producer behind Skyfall, Gladiator, and Penny Dreadful, who will also serve as showrunner. It is produced by Paramount Television Studios, with executive producers including Logan, Michael Aguilar (Penny Dreadful: City of Angels), and Davis herself alongside husband Julius Tennon through their JuVee Productions banner. Production is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles in 2027, with a premiere expected in late 2027 or 2028.

Heughan’s post-Outlander hot streak

Ascent caps off a remarkably busy stretch for Heughan since Outlander took its final bow in May after eight seasons on Starz. He is already signed on to star in Embassy, a political thriller for MGM+ alongside J.K. Simmons and Anna Kendrick, centered on an attack on the US Embassy in London. Heughan is not the only star making a major casting move this month: Scarlett Johansson’s Ari Aster thriller Scapegoat just added Cory Michael Smith to its stacked ensemble.

His work on Outlander earned him BAFTA Scotland and Critics’ Choice Award nominations, and the show’s fanbase remains one of the most passionate in television. Streamers live and die on built-in audiences, and few actors bring a more devoted following than the man who played Jamie Fraser for eight years.

Conal also looks like a deliberate bid for range. Heughan has long been vocal about wanting to stretch beyond the romantic hero lane, and a fixer who enjoys the ruthlessness of the job is a character with genuine darkness in him, the kind of role that lets an actor show what critics sometimes miss when a performer is beloved for one iconic part.

Viola Davis keeps raising the bar

Davis’s involvement alone elevates Ascent from promising to must-watch. As an EGOT winner, she remains one of the very few performers to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, and her television track record is formidable: an Emmy for How to Get Away with Murder (ABC, 2014-2020) and a starring turn in Showtime’s 2022 limited series The First Lady. A fixer whose estranged daughter is in danger is a setup practically engineered for her strengths. Nobody on television plays righteous fury and quiet heartbreak in the same scene the way she does.

The corporate-crisis setting is also smart. In an era when real-world corporate scandals dominate headlines weekly, a thriller about the people paid to bury those scandals feels uncomfortably timely. It is the kind of high-concept premise that can sustain multiple seasons. Streamers are clearly betting big on the genre right now: Chris Pratt just led The Terminal List season 2 cast at its New York premiere ahead of that show’s streaming launch.

Why this casting is smarter than it looks

On paper, Heughan and Davis come from different acting galaxies. He is the Scottish heartthrob who became a global star through romantic drama. She is the Juilliard-trained powerhouse whose intensity has anchored some of the heaviest material in film and television. But that contrast is precisely what makes the pairing exciting. The best screen partnerships are built on friction: a fixer who has built her life on control, suddenly losing control over the one thing she cannot fix, and an agent who treats every mission like a game, suddenly playing for stakes that are personal.

There is also a neat symmetry to Heughan’s journey. He became famous playing a man out of time, fighting to protect the people he loved in a world that kept trying to destroy them. Now he will play a man very much of this time, operating in a world he helps to corrupt, whose enjoyment of the job is the whole point. Jamie Fraser protected his clan. Conal protects his clients, and himself, first.

For Outlander fans mourning the end of an era, this is the best possible news. Heughan is not fading into the mist. He is walking straight into a glass tower in Los Angeles, into a role built for reinvention, opposite one of the greatest actors alive. The Highlands will always be there. For now, the corporate shadows are calling.

Ascent begins production in Los Angeles in 2027 and is expected to premiere on Paramount+ in late 2027 or 2028. We will be following every casting update, first look, and trailer right here.