Copyright New York Post
Jacob Elordi is no prude. The “Frankenstein” star has opened up about his 2023 thriller “Saltburn” – and one scene in particular that left viewers shocked about what unfolded on the screen. “I actually think it shows me just how, I guess, prudish we are,” the Australian actor, 28, told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Thursday. “When I watch that, I just think there’s far more extreme things in cinema that I’ve seen, far more graphic.” The “Saltburn” scene in question takes place when Barry Keoghan’s character, Oliver, drinks the bathwater after secretly watching Elordi’s character, Felix, masturbate in the tub. Besides causing a stir online, the scene inspired a “Jacob Elordi’s Bathwater” candle. Elordi, however, was surprised by the reactions the sequence received. “There are more alarming things in the top 10 streamed remakes of crime documentaries on every streaming platform,” he explained. “I think that’s much more alarming, the kind of horrible joy that we all get from watching children be mutilated. That’s what was interesting to me.” “I was like, here’s a piece of fiction with something just a little taboo, and that makes people’s skin crawl,” the “Euphoria” star concluded. “It’s an interesting parallel.” The “Priscilla” star previously discussed the bathtub scene and how he was “really excited” to film it last year. “I was just really excited when I read that scene,” he told Stream Wars in January 2024. “Because you don’t really see things like that in sort of mainstream movies a lot of the time.” “So it’s just great that [Emerald Fennell] was allowed to kind of push those boundaries and expose people like that.” But Elordi wouldn’t be the first person from “Saltburn” to look back on the movie’s infamous bathtub scene. Fennell, who wrote, directed and produced the popular black comedy thriller, revealed how the film’s cinematographer, Linus Sandgren, reacted to the sequence. “When Barry started to rim the drain, Linus squealed like a little girl, and we had to edit it out, and he was like, ‘F–k,'” Fennell, 40, told EW after the movie’s 2023 release. “That is the thing,” she continued. “If in the room on the monitor you are all feeling like, ‘Whoa, holy s–t,’ then it’s the most exciting thing in the world.” The filmmaker went on to explain how the “Saltburn” bathtub scene with Elordi and Keoghan’s characters creates an “involuntary physical response” in those watching the movie. “It’s not just that something’s incredibly sexy, or at least I think it is; it has an involuntary physical response, actually, that even when you are not physically supposed to respond vocally because you’re filming, you do that because it’s something that you can’t help but respond to,” she said. “And it’s those moments where you know that you are getting to something that is incredible,” Fennell added. Another surprising scene unfolds near the end of the movie when Keoghan’s Oliver climbs atop Felix’s grave, removes his pants and begins dry humping the dirt. It was later revealed that the “Eternals” star improvised the shocking moment, and Keoghan, 31, explained his reasoning for including the scene during the 2024 Golden Globes. “I wanted to see what Oliver would do next,” the Irish actor told Deadline during the awards show last year. “I wanted to see what the next level of obsession was.” “And by that [I mean], I just wanted the camera to roll,” he continued. “Not to kind of preempt it or rehearse it and what happened, happened. It was one take, and I think it was right. It moved the story forward.”
