'Saltburn' Director Address Barry Keoghan's Full-Frontal Nude Scene & Why It Was 'Earned'

Barry Keoghan dares to bare it all in Saltburn. Now, director Emerald Fennell is opening up about the decision to include full-frontal nudity in the movie.

The 31-year-old actor has previously explained how he felt about shooting the daring scene and what the experience was like. We even learned how many takes they filmed to get the footage that we see in the movie.

In a new interview, Emerald talked about how the scene felt “earned” within the story instead of being “gratuitous.”

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“When it comes to nudity, I’m very, very thoughtful — I hope,” she told People. She continued, adding, “Whether it’s people having breakfast or whether it’s a nude dance, why is it in the movie? What is it telling us? What response does it give us?”

In regards to Saltburn, she explained that Barry was drawn in by “moments in this movie, where the joy and the terror and the amazingness is knowing you are going to go somewhere that is so unbelievable.”

Emerald stressed that “enthusiastic consent” was key to filming such scenes, noting that Barry was in agreement with her the whole time.

“About the fact that we, all of us, only do anything because we really, really profoundly believe in it… It’s interesting how the framing of these questions a lot of the time is like, ‘How did you make Barry do this?’ Or, ‘How did you get Barry to…’ And I’m just like, ‘There is no such thing.’ It’s like asking, ‘How did I get somebody into bed?’ It’s not the way that works.”

What was the experience like? “We’re together making the stickiest, most beautiful, complicated thing. We are all in that together, and [if] anyone, at any point, changes their mind about that, that is absolutely fine. It’s like anything — it’s got to be beautiful and it’s got to be mutual.”

If you missed it, Barry and his costar Jacob Elordi recently had some wild reactions to the movie’s NSFW scenes.

Saltburn premiered in theaters on November 17. Press play on the trailer below…