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00:00 (typewriter ding)
00:03 There's a sense of actors,
00:04 they are treated as though they are infantilized.
00:08 They are not, people are not honest,
00:11 and yet they are the most insightful
00:14 and aware people of that.
00:15 So for me, it's always about honesty,
00:17 like not being cruel, ever being cruel, not being mean,
00:21 but being honest in the way that people know
00:23 that I'm not pandering to them, that I'm not,
00:26 you know, that we are equals
00:28 and they can tell me to fuck off
00:30 and I can tell them to fuck off.
00:31 That changes everything, you know,
00:33 when you can be honest like that,
00:34 when you're not being obsequious,
00:36 smoothing things over all the time.
00:39 (upbeat music)
00:41 - All this stuff, some sort of homilish squat.
00:48 - And both his parents were dealing.
00:51 God, and his mother's a drunk.
00:53 I mean, babies can be really affected, traumatized.
00:55 - Oh, they come out drunk.
00:57 - Is that right, that he had to put his fingers
00:58 down his mother's throat to make her sick?
01:00 - Farley, that's private stuff.
01:01 Well, you told us.
01:03 - In confidence.
01:04 - His mother said it.
01:05 - Oh, darling, can you imagine doing that to me?
01:06 - I think that's actually rather normal when you're poor.
01:08 I think when you're poor,
01:09 that sort of thing does happen a little bit more.
01:11 You don't give me away one time.
01:13 - Good luck, he doesn't smile much.
01:15 - Farley seems to think he's ghastly.
01:17 Why are you around this dark poor, not attractive,
01:19 and his parents are drug addicts?
01:20 I can't actually understand.
01:21 - And here he is now.
01:23 We were just talking about you.
01:24 - Don't be silly.
01:26 - Farley, you just make up the most awful things.
01:28 - Of course we weren't.
01:29 Hello, Oliver, darling.
01:31 Oh, beautiful eyes.
01:34 Oh, how wonderful.
01:36 - Yeah, I told you he wasn't a minger.
01:38 - Oh, but darling, you're kind about everyone.
01:40 You can't be trusted.
01:42 - Welcome to "Behind the Lens" today.
01:44 Oh my gosh, I've got an Oscar winner here.
01:47 And many other awards too.
01:50 I mean, she is sort of, when I say she can do it all,
01:53 she can do it all.
01:54 She's written for the stage.
01:56 She's acted on the stage.
01:58 She's written for movies and television.
02:00 She's acted in movies and television.
02:02 You do it all.
02:03 This is Emerald Fonnell.
02:05 Hi.
02:06 (laughs)
02:06 - Thank you very much.
02:07 What an introduction.
02:08 - Yes, well, you know, and you start now with Oscar winner.
02:12 I was reading of some things and everything.
02:14 They've changed your name.
02:15 It used to just be Emerald, started with Emerald.
02:17 Now it's Oscar winning Emerald Fonnell.
02:20 - That's how I ask people to address me.
02:22 - Do they?
02:23 - My parents, you know, I had to be quite firm with them.
02:25 (laughs)
02:26 They found it like a difficult transition, but I insist.
02:30 - It is funny that once you get that, you know,
02:34 level there, that achievement,
02:36 it follows you everywhere, doesn't it?
02:38 - I mean, it's so awe-inspiring.
02:43 Like I can't, I still can't get over it.
02:46 I still, it still doesn't feel real.
02:48 Even though I, every time I see it,
02:50 I just think I can't believe this happened.
02:52 It's so amazing.
02:54 - That was, I remember that night
02:55 because it was a very unusual Oscars because of COVID.
02:58 And they went to Union Station
03:00 and it was a kind of a stripped down show,
03:03 but Frances McDormand and all of them
03:07 were winners along with you.
03:08 I thought Carrie should have won.
03:10 I was like going like, come on, Carrie Mulligan.
03:12 It was the best thing I'd ever seen her do.
03:14 Until now, Maestro, she just like on fire.
03:17 But, and of course your movie "Soul Burn,"
03:18 she's got a small role.
03:19 - I mean, she's just, look,
03:21 she's one of the absolute greats.
03:23 She's just timeless.
03:24 She's so brilliant, so talented.
03:26 She could do anything.
03:27 You know, in the same year that she did "Promising a Woman,"
03:30 she did "The Dig."
03:31 And then she's done "Maestro" and "Soul Burn."
03:34 And I don't, and I mean, I think like Felicia
03:36 and poor Jay Pamela could not be further from each other.
03:39 But you know, and she has that thing where people,
03:41 you know, like someone like Tilda Swinton, even,
03:43 you know, where people,
03:44 so many people came up to me after "Soul Burn"
03:46 and said, I didn't realize it was her until,
03:48 you know, like towards the end,
03:50 I didn't realize it was her
03:51 because she's just such a chameleon.
03:53 She's so talented.
03:55 She's just a joy.
03:56 - She loved doing that too.
03:57 I actually, I was talking to her and she brought that up
03:59 and she said, you know, she said,
04:02 I know exactly what to do.
04:04 - Oh, she's just, you know,
04:05 when she clicks with something, it's just like dynamite.
04:07 She's so, and her and Rosamund together in,
04:10 oh, for goodness sake.
04:11 - I mean, the whole cast, this movie "Soul Burn,"
04:13 obviously you're what they call follow-up,
04:16 follow-up to "Promising a Young Woman,"
04:18 which was just such a great movie.
04:20 And I love movies where you have no idea
04:23 where it's going or where it's going.
04:26 And, you know, and you have a real talent for that
04:29 'cause you did it again now with "Soul Burn" too.
04:32 I mean, I wonder what is in your head?
04:35 Did you live with this story somehow
04:39 before you actually, you know, got it written down or?
04:42 - Yeah, well, the way that I write is kind of exactly that.
04:45 It's sort of living it.
04:46 I have, I think ever since I was a kid,
04:48 and I think lots of writers have this,
04:49 I lived in kind of imaginary worlds.
04:52 I had, I kind of lived in parallel universes my whole life,
04:56 which were just as vivid as my real life, you know?
04:59 And it started very young and I've never been able
05:04 to stop it.
05:05 So at any given time, you know,
05:07 there are four or five places that I go
05:10 and "Soul Burn" was one of them.
05:12 And I maybe started thinking about it maybe eight years ago,
05:15 seven, eight years ago.
05:17 And it's so, I mean, I think that's how you can kind of,
05:19 that's how you can make something that feels sort of,
05:23 you know, detailed and rich and textured
05:26 because I've kind of been living in those rooms
05:30 with these people for so long.
05:31 And it's very strange feeling when it comes out
05:35 and suddenly it's not your imaginary world,
05:40 it's everyone's.
05:41 - It's real and it's like this beautiful,
05:45 they call them coffee table books,
05:47 but you can put it on and live on coffee tables everywhere
05:49 or wherever, is gorgeous.
05:51 And you look at it and you look at the world of "Soul Burn"
05:55 that you created, just this map of the whole, you know,
05:59 group of the family and the family tree, as it were,
06:03 genealogical.
06:04 - Totally, and that's by incredible Katie who,
06:06 so Katie is our graphic designer, just so talented,
06:09 so brilliant.
06:11 And she hand painted the opening title.
06:15 - It's amazing.
06:16 - So the reason that opening titles have that sense
06:19 of kind of crazed beauty and intensity and obsession,
06:23 it's because we did make them, you know,
06:25 it was Katie in India, her assistant,
06:27 over months painstakingly painting those opening credits.
06:32 And that's the thing,
06:33 that's the thing about making movies that's so thrilling
06:35 is that they are crafted.
06:37 You are using artists who make things and, you know,
06:41 something like the genealogy of the family,
06:43 you never see it.
06:44 - No.
06:44 - But, you know, or the maze, for example,
06:46 you were talking about the maze.
06:47 We had the maze. - The maze is amazing too.
06:49 - Even though the maze doesn't exist,
06:50 we had Adrian Fisher, who was, you know,
06:52 a world famous maze designer, design the "Soul Burn" maze
06:55 so that you can use it.
06:58 It's a usable maze.
06:59 So, you know, you can trace your finger
07:02 and the only thing we asked him was that it was square
07:05 and that there were two ways of getting in.
07:07 One should be the hardest maze he'd ever designed.
07:09 And the second thing should just be the cheats route.
07:12 - Yeah.
07:13 - And it just means that everything is real, you know,
07:15 as much as it can be, it's real.
07:17 And you can look at any prop, at any costume,
07:20 at anything and know that it's purposeful.
07:24 - Do you write when you wrote this script
07:27 with a direct location in mind
07:30 because you found this incredible place that was built,
07:34 I think in 1300 something?
07:36 - I mean, it's like a thousand years old, this place.
07:39 So no, I didn't have anywhere in mind,
07:41 but the one thing I did feel very strongly
07:43 was it shouldn't be a composite.
07:46 Firstly, because a lot of our shots needed to be long shots.
07:50 We needed to have the sense of like geography
07:52 that we needed to be familiar with it.
07:53 And so there was that, we couldn't kind of like
07:57 just hodgepodge various things together.
08:00 But also I really didn't want somewhere
08:02 that we'd seen before.
08:03 I wanted the audience to have that feeling
08:05 that Oliver does of like this unseen secret place.
08:10 And that's really difficult because obviously,
08:12 part of the reason this film exists is that we,
08:15 as a nation have exported our country houses
08:17 so effectively in film and TV.
08:20 So we have like Pemberley, which is Chatsworth.
08:23 We have Castle Howard as Brideshead.
08:25 We have Highclere Castle, which is Downton Abbey.
08:28 All of these real houses have this kind of like
08:31 alter ego universe.
08:34 And there's Mandalay from Rebecca.
08:35 - Oh my God, yeah.
08:36 - We have a world of country houses that do not exist
08:40 and yet are real.
08:41 And so Saltburn needed to have a very defined identity.
08:45 It needed to feel like a person.
08:46 It needed to feel like a character.
08:48 And so it needed to have the kind of, yeah, the charisma,
08:52 the sex appeal, frankly, of one of the families.
08:56 So it was very difficult finding somewhere
09:00 that hadn't been seen.
09:01 And the family, it had never even been photographed
09:04 inside before.
09:05 - Really, so this is like one of the great unused locations.
09:08 - It's never, ever been shown.
09:09 - Did you just go knock on the door and say,
09:11 "I want you to..."
09:12 (laughing)
09:13 How do you get something that's never been used?
09:15 - Well, I think the first thing you do is
09:17 every single one of us kind of went out.
09:19 We looked everywhere.
09:20 We realized quite early on,
09:22 we'd have to look far outside of London,
09:25 which meant that it would be more complicated.
09:28 We would all have to decamp and live somewhere.
09:30 So the cost, there were all sorts of those considerations.
09:33 But once we freed ourselves up,
09:35 knowing we could go far out,
09:38 that made it a little easier.
09:39 And then the other thing is it's about trust.
09:41 It's like any collaborators.
09:44 The family were incredible.
09:45 And the people who worked at the house were incredible.
09:47 And they helped us so much with some of the detail
09:49 of how you lay a table,
09:52 of the little things that it's impossible,
09:55 no matter how much research you do,
09:56 it's really difficult to...
09:57 - Those candles on that dinner table.
09:59 - The candles on the dinner table
10:01 are something that we added ourselves,
10:03 but it was more like a kind of etiquette thing.
10:05 It was things like,
10:07 we'd put ketchup into like silver bowls
10:10 and they were like,
10:11 "Oh no, no, you would never put ketchup into a bowl.
10:14 You would always have ketchup on the table
10:15 in a squeezy bottle."
10:17 And we were like, "What?"
10:18 And they were like,
10:19 "Oh no, to put it in a bowl would be very wrong."
10:22 And you were like, "What?"
10:23 So it's kind of those things.
10:25 And the thing is, is that they were just so supportive
10:27 and they believed in it
10:28 because the house to them is something that,
10:32 for thousands of years, they've looked after,
10:34 they have an archive of all the things.
10:36 And so it felt to them like part of that archive.
10:39 And it's people making sure people can trust you
10:44 and that they are collaborators
10:46 and that we respected them in the house very much.
10:49 It's always that that's how it works with every department.
10:52 It's making sure people know
10:53 that you're gonna do right by them.
10:56 - It sort of brings me up,
10:58 the title production designer
11:00 and they get Academy Awards and things,
11:02 but there's also the set decorator.
11:04 And this movie is a textbook example
11:07 of great set decoration.
11:10 It says so much about the eccentricities of this family
11:13 and everything else.
11:14 - And Charlotte, who's our set decorator,
11:17 works so closely with Susie, the production designer,
11:20 for precisely that reason.
11:22 You can't have one without the other.
11:25 Especially when you're looking at a place like this
11:29 that has to be lived in, that has to have,
11:32 it's not only beautiful, but it is a living place.
11:36 And so much of our time was spent making sure
11:40 that there was always a layer of human debris.
11:45 Because even though so much of the way this world works
11:48 is that it's clear,
11:50 the reason that these houses are so kind of,
11:54 that they're made for voyeurism,
11:56 because the staff who work there have to be able to see
12:01 from mirrors without being seen.
12:04 And then there are multiple doors to every room
12:06 so people can slip in after the family
12:08 of letting clear things away.
12:09 - So great.
12:10 - And that feeling, that feeling of both the kind of,
12:15 yeah, the perfect beauty and then the kind of real world
12:18 is, it's difficult to achieve.
12:21 And oh my God, Charlotte and Susie,
12:22 just the best, truly the best.
12:24 - Amazing.
12:25 This falls into a sort of sub-genre of Gothic romance,
12:30 Gothic country houses.
12:32 We've seen it in many different films.
12:34 I don't know your exact inspiration,
12:36 but I think you already gave it away a little bit
12:38 with Rebecca mentioning it here.
12:41 And Rebecca, of course, is Alfred Hitchcock's
12:43 only best picture winning, speaking of Oscars,
12:46 the only movie ever made that won the best picture Oscar.
12:49 He still never won best director.
12:52 It went to someone else that year,
12:53 but he did get one picture and it was Rebecca.
12:58 And this movie, if you're gonna say it reminds me
13:01 of something or other,
13:02 there is a little bit of Rebecca in this.
13:04 - Thank you so much.
13:05 I mean, no, absolutely.
13:08 That is the perfect example of the kind of Gothic,
13:11 the Gothic country house.
13:12 And it's equally an obsession.
13:15 It's just that her obsession,
13:17 the second Mrs. De Winter's obsession is with Rebecca.
13:19 - Absolutely about obsession.
13:21 And it's so kind of fascinating and rich.
13:23 And I think, you know,
13:25 looking at sort of "Brideshead Revisited,"
13:28 the go between these,
13:29 and even "Great Gatsby" actually,
13:31 which is a similar thing.
13:32 It's this, there is this very specific genre
13:34 of the kind of the outsider
13:37 whose life is transformed and frozen
13:41 and often kind of obliterated in some ways
13:43 by this kind of time,
13:46 this time in their life that can't be kind of,
13:48 yeah, can't be understood really.
13:50 And so what felt really interesting to me
13:53 is that it's often a genre about restraint.
13:57 And you know, what happens when you take the restraint
13:59 away from that and how quickly things unravel.
14:04 - Yeah.
14:05 - If you let them, you know.
14:06 - I'll say, yeah.
14:07 But that's the fun part, huh?
14:09 That's-
14:10 - That's the fun part.
14:11 - Doing that.
14:12 You mentioned the go between.
14:13 That's having quite a revival.
14:15 It's very hard to find even on DVD,
14:16 but like 1971 movie,
14:19 Todd, the director of "May/December"
14:20 was so taken with that movie,
14:22 he fell in love with the score,
14:23 Michelle LeGrand score,
14:25 and uses it in "May/December."
14:26 - That's so interesting.
14:28 - Isn't that wild?
14:29 - I didn't know that I hadn't put those two things together.
14:30 I mean, I think Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter
14:33 is probably one of the greatest,
14:35 it's like as good as "Merchant Ivory."
14:37 The servant and the go between are so kind of important
14:43 when it's kind of looking at something like "Saltburn,"
14:46 the kind of eroticism, the expressionistic way of filming,
14:50 so much of what me and Linus like to do
14:53 and what we really fought to do on "Saltburn" so much
14:56 is to make sure that it worked as much as a silent film,
14:59 as it worked as a film of dialogue,
15:01 that you know that the Gothic tradition of pathetic fallacy
15:05 of the world outside reflecting the interior life,
15:08 that that is plain in every single shot,
15:13 that every camera move has an emotional truth to it,
15:17 has a kind of visual impact
15:18 that tells you something about your characters.
15:21 Like that is what Joseph Losey's genius was.
15:25 And then Harold Pinter's genius was the kind of insight,
15:29 the dialogue, the lacerating, cruel, distant, cold,
15:34 but somehow erotic dialogue.
15:36 Like those two together are dynamite.
15:39 - Those are the inspirations.
15:41 As you go on with a writing and directorial career,
15:44 you're looking at artists like that
15:46 who have done this before,
15:47 and it's pretty powerful stuff to go back and see it,
15:52 stuff that stands the test of time.
15:54 - Yeah, absolutely.
15:55 And we do go back to it again and again
15:58 because it's very hard to give you a feeling,
16:03 give people a physical response to something.
16:08 You can do it with comedy, you can do it with horror,
16:11 but when you're making something
16:12 that is all of those things, to make people squirm,
16:16 to make people uncomfortable, aroused,
16:19 a little bit concerned, that is what the servant did.
16:24 - You have a couple of scenes in this movie, for sure,
16:26 that have done that,
16:27 and every good movie has its divisiveness.
16:31 There are people that come out of that and go,
16:32 "Oh my God, they just don't want to open their mind."
16:35 But you do have scenes in there
16:37 that people talk about no matter whether they loved it
16:40 or hated it. - Totally.
16:41 And everyone has a different,
16:43 what is so thrilling and what we had with "Promising a Woman"
16:47 and I think we have with "Saltburn"
16:50 is that there is a visceral reaction,
16:55 there is a verbal reaction in the room,
16:59 and everyone, and the audience, it's so wonderful.
17:03 In every room I've watched this film in,
17:05 it's been different.
17:07 But what is the same is that when these scenes
17:11 that you're talking about happen,
17:13 some people are screaming, some people are gasping,
17:17 some people are vocally repulsed,
17:20 some people are completely silent
17:21 because to them this is nothing,
17:24 they're not interested in it,
17:26 some people find it profoundly arousing,
17:29 some people, you know, and then every single person
17:32 thinks other people in the audience's response is bizarre.
17:36 So the people who are disgusted
17:37 can't understand the people who are turned on,
17:39 the people who are vocal can't understand
17:41 the people who are silent and don't think it's a big deal.
17:44 And then the audience kind of turns on itself.
17:46 There's a kind of, then there's a like, shh,
17:49 and that feeling, that is what movies are for,
17:52 is to sit and realize how different we all are
17:56 and how, you know, but also how much as we are
18:00 kind of like an organism that responds to each other.
18:03 It's why, you know, I make things to be watched
18:05 in the theater, you know?
18:07 And so it's been wonderful.
18:10 And of course, like, of course you just have to,
18:12 you know, sometimes people don't, you know, don't,
18:15 it's not for them.
18:16 - Right.
18:17 - But the movies that I really, really love
18:20 and even the books that I really love,
18:21 when you go back, you find they had
18:24 a kind of similar response.
18:25 And so it's kind of, you know,
18:27 it's something you have to tuck away quite early on
18:29 to understand that for those that love it,
18:31 they're gonna really love it.
18:33 - Oh, totally.
18:33 Now, I don't wanna give too much away
18:35 because this is also designed to make people
18:38 want to see the movie if they haven't seen it.
18:40 And this has got so many spoiler things
18:41 and I'm not gonna give them away,
18:43 but Barry Cogan is involved in all of these scenes
18:46 we're sort of talking about here.
18:48 And how do you get an actor like Barry Cogan,
18:50 who's so wonderful, he was nominated
18:52 for an Oscar himself last year,
18:54 and he can do almost anything,
18:56 killing of a sacred deer,
18:57 I just can't get this guy's picture out of my mind
19:00 after seeing that particular movie.
19:02 But he does things like, okay, I want you to do this,
19:05 I want you to run around naked in the house,
19:07 I want you to, you know, do these other scenes.
19:12 What is your relationship, in other words,
19:13 with an actor in asking them to trust you?
19:16 - Honestly, it's exactly that, it's trust.
19:18 It's totally trust, and it's consent, and it's honesty.
19:23 The thing about this film is that the first thing,
19:27 the first thing I will say is that every scene
19:31 in the kind of intimate scenes,
19:33 for me, they are designed to be sexy.
19:36 Whether they're troubling or not, I don't know,
19:38 but for me, for myself, they are supposed to be sexy,
19:40 they are supposed to be a fair reflection
19:42 of what it feels like to be in the grip
19:44 of an absolutely impossible desire,
19:48 or no kind of chokehold.
19:50 And in order to do that, you know, you have to be honest,
19:55 you have to be willing to not, you know,
19:58 you can't be embarrassed.
20:00 You have to, you know, take the bull by the horns
20:03 and look it in the eye.
20:04 And the thing about Barry is, if it feels honest to him,
20:08 he has absolutely no concern.
20:10 He's like me, we wanna jump off a cliff,
20:13 and if it means that we're gonna like smash up together
20:15 on the rocks on the bottom, that's part of the thrill,
20:18 that's part of the feeling of making something
20:20 that feels, you know, dangerous in its intimacy,
20:24 in its honesty.
20:26 And so for me, having a collaborator like Barry,
20:30 it's so thrilling, it's so important,
20:32 'cause we get, we understand each other, you know.
20:36 And that's not to say that we don't occasionally
20:38 like disagree on stuff, when we do, we work it out,
20:40 we're very honest with each other.
20:42 But when he understands it, when he understands what I mean,
20:45 when I say, 'cause he and me are equal parts Oliver,
20:50 you know, sort of we're these kind of like weird,
20:53 perverse twins in that regard.
20:56 So when, so there are moments when we know,
20:58 both of us, what needs doing.
21:00 And so he's just remarkable.
21:03 And I think the other thing is, is that I will say as well,
21:06 is that the scenes that are erotic scenes
21:10 are not the scenes with nudity.
21:12 In fact, in the erotic scenes,
21:13 you rarely see below the shoulders.
21:16 - Yeah, that's interesting. - Or never,
21:17 you never see anything.
21:18 The scenes with nudity are not about sex at all.
21:21 - No. - They're about grief,
21:22 or joy, or triumph, or horror, you know.
21:26 And that's another thing.
21:28 It's what you're asking,
21:30 how you're asking people to employ
21:32 the kind of tools that they have,
21:34 whether it's their body, whether it's their voice, whatever.
21:37 So, and the other thing is, is that if anyone, any point,
21:41 this is why having intimacy coordinators is so important.
21:44 And our intimacy coordinator, Miriam,
21:46 was outstandingly wonderful and crucial.
21:49 And I never, ever wanna, never,
21:51 I can't believe that we ever worked without them, honestly.
21:53 It's so disturbing that we did, but she's extraordinary.
21:57 And the thing for me is also, it's an ongoing,
21:59 like consent in real life, it's an ongoing conversation.
22:01 - Yeah. - It's never about me
22:03 getting anyone to do anything.
22:05 It's never about coercion.
22:06 If anyone, after the fact, in the edit,
22:09 after they see it in ADR, says,
22:10 "I don't feel comfortable with this,"
22:12 it's out immediately. - Is that right?
22:14 - Of course. - Yeah.
22:15 - Because I'm not looking to ever,
22:17 the first thing is, is that the trust has to be real.
22:20 You know, it has to be real.
22:22 It's not me just saying, it's not, you know,
22:24 in the olden days, it was about getting people to do stuff.
22:27 - Yeah. - By hook or by crook.
22:29 That doesn't work for me.
22:30 It's only honest if everyone's,
22:32 if we all connect to it profoundly.
22:35 And so that was the thing, is that-
22:37 - I think it helps that you're an actor, too.
22:39 And actors understand that you understand.
22:41 - Yeah. - What you go through
22:43 in front of the camera. - Yeah.
22:44 And I know what it feels like to have been coerced.
22:46 - Yeah. - I understand what it,
22:48 I know that feeling. - Yeah.
22:50 - This movie was interesting to me
22:51 that the object of his obsession
22:53 truly is an Adonis, this guy.
22:55 - Oh. - Jacob Elordi.
22:56 - Oh, yeah. - You know,
22:57 and from everything he's done,
22:58 and he's playing Elvis now,
23:00 and of course, "Euphoria," and all that.
23:03 But the character himself is kind of like,
23:05 "Okay, why is he so fascinated by this guy?"
23:09 - But isn't that the truth?
23:11 Isn't that the truth of "Desire,"
23:12 is that we make ourselves up,
23:14 but we also make up the objects of our desire, too.
23:16 - So true. - And so I think the thing is,
23:19 I mean, honestly, Jacob, he is so gifted.
23:24 And that's the thing about him,
23:25 is that he's sort of a stealth missile,
23:27 because of course his beauty is so remarkable
23:30 that it's easy to perhaps underestimate how good he is.
23:34 - Right. - What a gifted performer he is.
23:37 And his powers of observation, I mean, he's an Australian.
23:42 - Yeah. - He came
23:45 and gave a performance as Felix,
23:47 which is just one of the most
23:48 remarkably brilliant bits of observational comedy,
23:52 of observational acting I've ever seen.
23:54 And he imbues him, and Elvis, too,
23:59 these people who are on pedestals with such truth
24:04 and kind of fallibility and detail.
24:07 You know, he's so brilliant.
24:10 He's so brilliant, and he's so funny.
24:12 You know, like, just watching "Priscilla,"
24:15 which is just another, like, masterpiece from Sofia Coppola.
24:19 But, you know, to give that performance as Elvis,
24:24 to make him a real person,
24:26 but there's also a moment in that film
24:28 where he's, like, talking about the Bible
24:33 to lots of sexy girls. - Yeah.
24:35 - And the way he does it is one of the funniest things
24:39 I've ever seen, because it is the most,
24:41 it is the perfect encapsulation
24:42 of somebody's sort of delusional, like,
24:45 sort of, you know, just a kind of somebody
24:48 who's totally lost their mind.
24:50 - Exactly. - And become a sort of guru.
24:52 But yet it's not a comedy performance.
24:55 It's just so truthful that it's devastating.
24:58 And that's what he did with Felix.
25:00 It's so honest, but it's funny,
25:03 because he's, exactly as you say, he's just some guy.
25:06 - Yeah. - He's just kind of a dick.
25:08 - Right. - He's so beautiful,
25:10 and he's so rich, and he's so tall,
25:13 that we, all of us, are willing to smooth over
25:16 the fact that he discards women like nothing,
25:19 that he doesn't even look them in the eye,
25:21 he just spanks them on the butt
25:22 and gets them to go home with him,
25:24 that he's callous, that he's capricious,
25:27 that he's lazy, snobbish, racist,
25:31 all of the things that he is.
25:33 All of the things that Felix is.
25:34 In every scene, he does something kind of shitty.
25:37 - Yeah. - And yet we're like,
25:39 but he's so beautiful.
25:42 - He has his perception of him.
25:44 - Yeah. - I love it.
25:46 Before we go, I have to, you know,
25:48 this, your career is so fascinating to me.
25:51 I mean, you did the whole second season of "Killing Eve."
25:55 Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a good friend,
25:57 she brought you in, you're the showrunner there,
25:59 you know, on this, Emmy nominations galore.
26:02 Acted in many films, you know,
26:04 obviously "The Crown" and different things.
26:07 You are a children's novelist,
26:09 you have a series of children's novels.
26:12 You just do it all.
26:14 How did that start?
26:16 You know, what was that,
26:17 that you wanted to be this quadruple threat
26:20 in this business?
26:21 - Well, I didn't.
26:23 I mean, thank you.
26:24 But I think the thing that I always wanted to do
26:26 was to make movies, like I am now.
26:29 And, you know, in England,
26:32 we didn't maybe have the, we're starting to now,
26:35 but our tradition is a theatrical one.
26:38 We don't really have film schools in the same way
26:40 we have like amazing, you know,
26:41 the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts,
26:43 which is mostly for actors.
26:44 And so for me, it was,
26:48 the moment I left university,
26:49 I was lucky enough that my wonderful agent,
26:52 Lindy, came to see me in a play at university
26:55 and offered to take me on.
26:57 But I was just, honestly,
27:01 at every stage I was writing scripts,
27:04 you know, from 20, whenever I left university,
27:06 22, 21, 22, I was writing scripts,
27:09 I was writing books, I was acting,
27:12 I was doing what I could to be able to make my own things.
27:17 And I think, so what happened was, you know,
27:20 I was in a show called "The Midwife," an amazing show,
27:23 which taught me everything I need to know
27:26 about like making things.
27:28 Because, you know, to work over the course of four years
27:31 on a show with the same cast and crew,
27:33 but with different directors and DPs every two episodes,
27:36 you just see what works.
27:38 You see what doesn't.
27:40 You know that in 20 minutes,
27:41 you can shoot 10 pages of medical dialogue
27:45 because the cast and crew know each other so well
27:47 that everyone pulls together to make something,
27:50 to make it possible in a one-er.
27:52 You know, that gives you so much confidence
27:55 and power as a director when I, you know,
27:56 if you know you can make your days,
27:59 because as long as we all love and trust each other
28:01 and help each other, we can get it done.
28:04 You know, that's what that show taught me.
28:06 But in the hiatus of that show, I wrote a book.
28:09 And the last book that I wrote, "Monsters,"
28:11 which is my third book that came out,
28:14 an amazing showrunner called Jessica Knappett
28:16 read that book.
28:18 It was a very dark comedy.
28:19 It was an adult novel,
28:20 but from the point of view of a very sort of troubled child.
28:25 She read it.
28:26 She asked me to come and write on "Drifters" season four,
28:29 her brilliant comedy.
28:30 So I wrote on that.
28:31 That gave me my first credit.
28:33 Then I, you know, made a short film that I directed
28:36 that went to Sundance.
28:37 You know, so it's that thing.
28:38 It's that things always, I think it's a funny one.
28:41 It looks maybe greedy because I was sort of doing so much.
28:46 But really it was so that I could learn enough
28:51 that I could get to the stage,
28:53 that I was able to make my own things like this.
28:55 - It's so amazing.
28:56 You're such an original voice now
28:59 'cause you wanted to do movies
29:00 and boy, have you done them.
29:02 Let me tell you, I could go on all day
29:05 about this movie alone.
29:07 And you know, you see it again and again
29:09 and you see so many things.
29:11 It's a mark of a great movie
29:12 'cause we don't just see it once.
29:14 "Saltburn," is it?
29:16 It's Amazon.
29:17 It's, oh, from Academy Award winner Emerald Fennel.
29:22 That's five words now.
29:23 - My full name.
29:24 (both laughing)
29:26 - A way to end this interview.
29:27 Thank you so much for coming and behind the lens with us.
29:30 - Thank you for having me.
29:31 (upbeat music)
29:34 (upbeat music)