“On paper, he wasn’t written to do that.”
Usually when you hint to THAT scene in a movie, your referring to just the one. What’s so brilliant about Saltburn is that we could be referring to a number of twisted scenes throughout the darkly comic flick.
While Barry Keoghan is at the centre of the myriad of shocking scenes in question, it’s the grave scene that really had our collective jaws on the floor.
What comes as even more of a shock is that the infamous scene, which has since taken the internet by storm, was improvised from the original script, according to Keoghan himself.
Warning: Major spoilers for Saltburn ahead.
Barry Keoghan says shocking Saltburn grave scene was improvised
The grave scene involves Keoghan’s character Oliver Quick mourning the loss of his friend Felix after he’s been buried.
After the family leave Felix’s grave, Quick stays and lays face down sobbing on the freshly laid soil before slowly undressing and eventually unzipping his trousers and thrusting himself into the ground.
Explaining how the controversial scene came to fruition in an interview with Variety, the Irish actor said he initially asked director Emerald Fennell for a closed set as he’d “like to try something.”
“On paper, he wasn’t written to do that,” Keoghan explained. “But I wanted to see what actually happened, where I would take it. I wanted to be confused and let my body lead the way. What am I doing? How can I get closer? It’s trying to find that new level of obsession.
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In another interview with Entertainment Weekly, it was revealed that the script only called for Oliver to “finger and kiss the freshly dug grave”.
However on the day of filming, Fennell said: “I spoke to Barry in the morning, and I just said, ‘I don’t know, Barry. I think that he would…unzip.’ And Barry just said, ‘Yup.’”
“She plants seeds, Emerald, you know what I mean?” Keoghan added. “She knows that they’re going to grow, these seeds, especially when she plants them with me.
“But it is a testament to Emerald and having that idea and me meeting it with, to be honest, no questions. I was totally on board for it.”
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