Jacob Elordi has revealed that Barry Keoghan wasn’t the first choice to play the lead role of Oliver Quick in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn.
Keoghan’s character becomes enamoured with Elordi’s popular boy Felix Catton while they are studying at Oxford University. The two bond and Felix invites Oliver to stay at his family’s ancestral home, Saltburn, over the summer.
Though Keoghan has been frequently praised for his performance, Elordi has now revealed that someone else was originally eyed up for his part.
Elordi recalls in an interview with Vogue UK asking Keoghan “what drew” him to the film, the latter replied: “When I met Emerald, she told me that she had you kind of down to do it. So, Emerald, yourself and the script… what about you?” [via The Independent].
Elordi then said: “Definitely yeah, it was Emerald,” and added, with laughter: “Then she said she wanted Timothée Chalamet for it. And I said ‘Have you thought about Barry Keoghan?’”
Keoghan also recently revealed that one particularly shocking scene in which his character has sex with a grave was not originally part of the script and was completely improvised.
“On paper, he wasn’t written to do that,” Keoghan revealed to Variety. “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?”
Speaking of the scene, Fennell explained to Enterainment Weekly how it came as an afterthought, saying: “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.”
On her decision, Barry expanded: “She plants seeds, Emerald, you know what I mean? She knows that they’re going to grow, these seeds, especially when she plants them with me. But it is a testament to Emerald having that idea and me meeting it with. To be honest, no questions. I was totally on board for it.’”
Fennell added: “There’s no way it couldn’t be in the film. There’s no way I could see a performance of that dedication — an expression of grief and love as intense as that — and not show it.”
Elsewhere, Margot Robbie, whose production company LuckyChap Entertainment was behind the film, recently revealed that the infamous bathtub scene “didn’t feel that shocking” to her when she first read the script.