Jacob Elordi Calls Out "Prudish" Response To Saltburn Bathtub Scene

When Saltburn was released in 2023, there was one moment that had everyone talking for weeks. The scene in which Barry Keoghan’s obsessive Oliver slurps up the bathwater that Jacob Elordi’s Felix had just pleasured himself in inspired countless shocked tweets, thinkpieces, and even its own scented candles. But to Elordi himself, the scandalized response was disappointing.

The actor reflected on all the pearl-clutching around that Saltburn scene in a Nov. 6 Entertainment Weekly interview. "I actually think it shows me just how, I guess, prudish we are," Elordi said. "When I watch that, I just think there's far more extreme things in cinema that I've seen, far more graphic."

He compared the audience’s over-the-top reaction to the scene to the violent gore in popular projects that isn’t met with the same shock. "There's more alarming things in the top 10 streamed remakes of crime documentaries on every streaming platform," Elordi said. "I think that's much more alarming, the kind of horrible joy that we all get from watching children be mutilated. That's what was interesting to me."

He went on to note how stepping slightly outside of sexual mores seems to get an overblown response. "I was like, here's a piece of fiction with something just a little taboo, and that makes people's skin crawl. It's an interesting parallel," Elordi said.

When the film premiered, Elordi pointed to the bathtub scene as a moment that had particularly motivated him when he first read the script. “I was just really excited when I read that scene because you don’t really see things like that in mainstream movies a lot of the time,” Elordi said in an interview with Stream Wars.

He credited writer and director Emerald Fennell for challenging viewers to step out of their maybe-prudish ways with the moment. “So it’s just great that Emerald was allowed to kind of push those boundaries and expose people like that,” Elordi said.