Margot Robbie, Rosamund Pike & Emerald Fennell Discuss the Seduction of Saltburn
W’s Editor at Large Lynn Hirschberg sat down with the actresses and director in L.A. to discuss the movie on everyone’s lips.
The frigid cold may be rearing its head these days in Los Angeles, but Saltburn is still heating things up. On Wednesday, January 10, Hollywood insiders headed to Nya West Studios for an intimate screening of Saltburn, followed by a Q&A moderated by W’s Editor at Large Lynn Hirschberg, in conversation with members of the film’s all-star team: director and screenwriter Emerald Fennell, producer Margot Robbie, and actor Rosamund Pike. The quartet spent the evening delving into the cinema sundae of eroticism, greed, and the siren call of the unattainable that’s been setting the Internet ablaze.
“There are so many things in this movie that make you feel conflicted,” Robbie said. “There are things that disgust you and repulse you as much as they titillate you.” The actress praised Fennell’s expertise for letting the nuances of conflicting emotions breathe onscreen: “It’s really this amazing magic trick that Emerald does—she did it in Promising Young Woman and she does it in this movie. It’s that constant war of primal urges that you’re feeling within yourself.”
From left: Emerald Fennell, Rosamund Pike, Margot Robbie, and Lynn Hirschberg in conversation.
Diving into the seemingly impenetrable bubble of the elite and crafting an inner world for her character was a treat for Pike, who plays the Catton family matriarch, Elspeth. “You’ve got to be seduced by this family. You’ve got to want to be part of it,” she said. “Who wouldn’t accept an invitation? It’s why they’re so maddening, the British upper classes—because you can’t have what they have. However much money you have, you can’t buy into it. You can buy a house…but you’ll never get the title and you’ll never get the status or whatever it is that allows them to either permit you to belong or make you feel excluded. That’s why it was so fun for me, because I’ve been made to feel excluded many times. So it was cathartic to enact it, and wither people,” she added drawing laughter from the crowd. “And also bestow my benevolent gaze on them when I wished, which is what these people do. It’s monstrous but also, as soon as the benevolent gaze comes, you’re like, Ahhh I want to be in it.”
Rosamund Pike
Margot Robbie
As Hirschberg noted during the Q&A discussion, part of the thrill of being an audience member when watching Saltburn are the unexpected moments in which the viewer will find themselves charmed by the Catton family, despite their cruelty.
Rosamund Pike and Margot Robbie
“It’s disarming, that’s the thing. It means taking people’s weapons away,” Fennell said, recalling a scene between Elspeth (Pike) and outsider Oliver (played by Barry Keoghan). “You think you know what you’re going to expect when you walk into that room and then Oliver walks in—and we’ve heard them talk about him, we know how cruel they are—but when Rosamund takes Barry’s hand as Elspeth and looks him in the eye and says ‘Oh, what beautiful eyes,’ you’re like, ‘Oh, well hands off.’ You can’t help it.”
It was at this point in the 30-minute conversation that Fennell took a moment on stage to meditate on a recurring question threaded throughout Saltburn: What will we forgive and overlook in the name of beauty?
