In a new photoshoot for W Magazine, actor Barry Keoghan and director Emerald Fennell pay homage to one of the most talked about scenes from their hit film Saltburn, and the results are bloody hot!
Saltburn — which follows low-income Oxford student Oliver (Keoghan) as he becomes obsessed with wealthy classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi), who invites Oliver to spend the summer at his family's sprawling estate — shocked vanilla audience members with scenes that showed Oliver slurping up Felix's semen-infused bathwater and humping a grave.
But it was a scene involving blood that Fennell wanted to try to capture with this photoshoot. Dubbed the "vampire scene" by fans, in it, Venetia tells Oliver that she's on her period, and he responds, "It's lucky for you I'm a vampire," before wiping her menstrual blood on his face and hers. The two share a blood-soaked kiss, and then he goes down on her.
In tribute to that moment and the infamous bathtub scene, one of the most striking images shows the 31-year-old actor sitting in a bathtub full of what looks like blood while only wearing black vinyl opera gloves with sharp-looking black nails on the fingertips and a pearl necklace. "It looks like I'm giving birth to Barry," Fennell told W Magazine as she photographed her star. "It's a water birth."
Keoghan didn't think twice when the Promising Young Woman director asked him to get in another bathtub for the photoshoot. "I did it, without hesitation!" he said. "Emerald getting in the bath with me is metaphorical for the way she directs—she gets into it with you. She isn't in her trailer or having an assistant come over to give you notes; she's right beside you. That's where bold choices come from."
Another photo shows Keoghan shirtless, wearing lipstick-red vinyl gloves and a vinyl apron, as he casually sips from a Buffy the Vampire Slayer mug while a body is slipping out from behind a door.
While this is a bold wardrobe choice, Keoghan is no stranger to making surprising choices in his career. In the film's final scene, Keoghan's character Oliver dances naked through the mansion to Sophie Ellis-Bexter's 2001 hit song "Murder on the Dancefloor." "I didn't know I could do something like that, and to see it play back on-screen gave me a massive amount of confidence," Keoghan said of the experience. "So maybe there's something down that route I can take."
Another striking photo features him in a silver sequined top, his face and hands covered in blood as a partially eaten pig's heart sits on a plate in front of him. Fennell said that to make things that are "outrageous" and "camp," you have to "create a space where people feel like they're safe, that they're not being shoved off a cliff and that we're all doing it together." She explained that Keoghan's willingness to go there for a scene is remarkable. "He wants to be at the sharp end, always. He only finds it interesting there, and that's how I feel too," Fennell said.
Now, we're just keeping our fingers crossed the two collaborate again in the future because we need more salacious, gender-bending content in our lives. Even better if it freaks out the normies!
