‘Saltburn’: Rosamund Pike’s immersion in the eccentricity and ‘delightful’ work of Emerald Fennell: ‘It was really nice to be able to live in that skin’

Like Elspeth Catton, Salt burnsRosamund Pike, the unconventional but bloodless matriarch, strikes a disturbingly precise tone as the oppressively careless mother of Jacob Elordi’s character Felix. When Felix brings home Oliver (Barry Keoghan), his apparently crippled new friend from Oxford University, Elspeth is excited to add a new tragic case to her toy collection. Among them is Carey Mulligan’s lost-soul character Poor Dear Pamela, an old friend on the run from a messy breakup with a Russian oligarch. Here, Pike honors the world created by writer-director Emerald Fennell and its unpredictable outcome.

DEADLINE: As a Brit like you, I’ve been waiting so long for someone to shake up this upper-class world – there are rules you’re never told, and when you find out what they are, they turn into something else. So you are never allowed to conform or perform well.

ROSAMUND PIKE: NONE. If you are overdressed, you are wrong, or if you are underdressed. Somehow you are wrong and you don’t quite know why or how. And being an actress is wrong from the start because it means taking something seriously, and it’s not really common to take something too seriously. I really care about acting and I’m very serious about it, and I would get on the nerves of someone like Elspeth terribly. There were always people saying to me, “Oh, do you have a job?” Do you have a movie? “You’re smart” and you just know you hear nice words like “you’re smart” and you just know it’s important. It was really refreshing to be Elspeth, it was really nice to be able to live in that skin.

DEADLINE: I remember being 14 years old when I was on vacation with a very distinguished family and my mother said to me at breakfast, “You know, guests are like fish.” After three days they stink.”

SNOEK: Oh dear God. It could have come straight from Elspeth’s mouth! And she would have thought she would say something funny.

DEADLINE: Tell me about your first meeting with Emerald about this role and when did you know you wanted to play Elspeth?

SNOEK: Well, it was a bit like the first time I met David Fincher. You think you are having a conversation with someone, just a general conversation, and at some point you realize that this is absolutely not how these people work. They never have a general conversation. You definitely have an idea and will see if you are a good fit. And there was a certain point where Emerald clearly believed wholeheartedly that I fit in. Emerald clearly sensed that I had what she wanted for Elspeth and I didn’t know she was offering it to me. But I think she’s very smart because she plants seeds from the first moment to the moment you film, and she plants, in a very roundabout way, exactly the seed that she wants from her cast, which is absolute camaraderie . No isolation on set, always together, don’t leave, enjoy.

There are movies where an actor comes in and you realize that he has planned everything and knows exactly what he is going to do and that he will do exactly the same whether you are playing the other character or someone else. . But I think Elspeth is Elspeth because Richard [E. Grant] is her husband and Jacob is her son and Alison [Oliver]is her daughter and Carey is Pamela. It affects all these people. There is one version of Elspeth, but Elspeth’s distinctiveness stems from all the others.

I think with Carey and I because we’ve known each other since she was 18 and I was 24 Pride and Prejudice, we have this familiarity and shorthand. Sisterly things. So I’m sure it has an influence, I’m sure I knew it would add to what you think about Elspeth and Pamela.

DEADLINE: When we first meet Elspeth, she and Pamela are gossiping about Oliver behind his back. Was it a bit of improvisation between you and Carey?

SNOEK: Yes, it was. Emerald usually allowed us to improvise in most scenes and sometimes small parts of it are captured. It was nice with Elspeth because I could just look up anything from 2006/07 and talk about it over dinner. This was the time Keith Richards allegedly smelled his father’s ashes…

DEADLINE: Oh my God, yes.

SNOEK: Which I think later turned out to be untrue. But Elspeth said, “Oh, of course I knew Keith. Natural. Absolutely. Of course, he always said he would sniff his father’s ashes. When we were in Mustique he had his ashes with him. He offered his ashes to all of us.”

So basically every story from Heat [a British tabloid magazine], or whatever at that moment, I could go on and on about dinner. I had fun because I’m not much of an improviser if I don’t know exactly who the character is, and with Elspeth I just had to take everything to the most extreme and vain version of whatever it was. She usually understands every story and puts herself in the middle of it. And it was really nice to live in this flat space. And of course, but because we were having so much fun, it was a shock to us and the characters when the tragedy happened.

Emerald is unusual. These characters are very close to her heart, she is always so funny. But behind that, you can see that she feels deeply and cares and is devastated by what is happening in the film. And one of the things she said when Elspeth discovered Felix [dead] In the labyrinth it was said: “I will never show it.” You can never see a mother’s grief on film. It’s just too terrible. It’s too much.” So when we hear Elspeth and when the others come in, she’s already battened down the shutters and buried the feelings, immediately pushing them aside and repressing them. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t. I don’t have to play [off-camera].

We never see what Elspeth sees. Jacob, in full makeup, being the generous person that he is, was there for me to have this experience. So for me as Elspeth, it’s an absolute reality, even though the audience has never seen it. This is Emerald. As an actress, she understands what an actor needs.

I couldn’t have just said, “Honey, come away.” “It’s lunchtime,” if Elspeth hadn’t already privately experienced her moment, or the beginning of it, and immediately gone numb. We only see them when the shock sets in. And I think some people may miss or fail to understand that these social codes become absolute lifelines for certain members of the British upper class who never really learned how to deal with their emotions because they were raised in boarding school by people who couldn’t not. love her And such an emotion is something terrifying. That’s why you should stick to drinks, food, lunch and the like because it shows you how to behave.

DEADLINE: In such a culture it’s embarrassing to show yourself, it’s a bit shameful.

SNOEK: Yes. Why this? It’s just crazy, isn’t it?

DEADLINE: I think this is generational avoidance.

SNOEK: What happened: Showing an emotion is self-centered.

DEADLINE: Like I care about the acting. Never show too much concern.

SNOEK: Keep everything comfortable, don’t worry, don’t try too hard, just behave perfectly. I also liked the way she framed the breakfast scene, the completely confusing rules about the order of eggs and everything else. Why?

DEADLINE: It’s just a tradition to make people feel excluded when they’re wrong.

SNOEK: I wonder how it plays… Does the same creature exist in America?

DEADLINE: I think there’s a certain chic aristocracy on the East Coast that does something similar, so it really translates. Did you think Emerald would make us think long and hard about some really unpleasant things?

SNOEK: Well, I did it because Linus [Sandgren], our amazing cameraman, showed us photos from the day before. And some of them will make you think, ‘My God, what is this?’ It’s someone’s bottom or a very intimate part of the body!’ And it would actually only be one shoulder. But it was the way you looked at it, the look was so erotic and so intimate and uncomfortable that you always thought you were seeing something more shocking than you really were. And conversely, something seems harmless, and then suddenly you think, “Oh, that’s not the case at all.”

I remember feeling very uncomfortable when I first saw the film. I couldn’t look at myself at all. I hated that I felt as uncomfortable as Elspeth… I don’t know exactly what it was, I felt pretty uncomfortable. I find the camera so personal, the lens so close and you can really see everything. And our editor was very, very nice and detailed.

So yeah, I was definitely shocked and felt very uncomfortable when I first saw it. And I regret never having the experience others will have if I go along for the ride. But maybe it could happen in a few years.

DEADLINE: What about the script?

SNOEK: I think the script fooled a lot of people. I don’t think we knew. She added things like the scene with Barry and Archie [Madekwe] where Oliver comes to Farleigh at night, rips him off and almost spits in his mouth. She just said, “Oh, I wrote another scene.” And the wonderful speech that Archie gives to Barry where Archie says: “This is life for me and for you, when you look back, it was just a Job in the golden haystack, big boy in the summer.” I thought: Who wrote this?

DEADLINE: This is so good.

SNOEK: How does that even come out of you? When? How? Because that’s exactly what it is: tinker in a haystack, a golden big boy summer. If someone drops it in my lap and says, “These are your lines for tomorrow,” I’ll be happy. Everything that comes out of her mouth or her cage is simply delicious.