Happy Sad Confused - Emerald Fennell

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Emerald Fennell is two for two in her young filmmaking career. Her debut, PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, earned her an Oscar and now with SALTBURN, she's made a BIG conversation starter featuring great performances and provocative subject matter once again. Here she chats with Josh about it all plus her work on KILLING EVE and that rumored ZATANNA film. SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Earnin -- Download EarnIn today in the Google play or Apple app store. When you download the EarnIn app type in Confused under PODCAST when you sign up Factor -- Head to ⁠⁠FactorMeals.com/HappySad50⁠⁠ and use code happysad50 to get 50% off! UPCOMING EVENTS January 8th -- Dan Levy -- tickets here! January 10th -- Josh Hutcherson -- tickets here! January 11th -- Annette Bening -- tickets here! January 17th -- Clive Owen -- tickets here! February 6th -- Emily Blunt -- tickets here! Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes of, video versions of the podcast, and more! To watch episodes of Happy Sad Confused, subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh's youtube channel here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. Okay, it's official. We are very much in the final sprint to election day. And face it, between debates, polling releases, even court appearances. It can feel exhausting, even impossible to keep up with. I'm Brad Milkey. I'm the host of Start Here, the Daily Podcast from ABC News. And every morning, my team and I get you caught up on the day's news in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand with just enough context so you can listen, get it, and go on with your day. Kickstart your morning. Start Smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel overwhelming. I feel lots of horrible things. Envy isn't one of them because I don't think that there's a finite amount of success in the world. So I don't believe that if somebody else has something, it's not possible. But that is not to say that I am not power-hungry, obsessed with being fuckable. you know, all of the things that we all are. Prepare your ears, humans.

Happy, sad, confused begins now. I'm Josh Horowitz. Today on Happy Say I Confused, it's Emerald Fennell. In my opinion, she's one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. She knocked me out with Promising Young Woman, which earned her a well-deserved Oscar. She is back with the audacious, the hypnotic, the sexy. I don't even know if there are enough adjectives for this one. Salt Burn is the movie.

seek this one out. It will rock your world. Here she is the one and only Emerald Fennell. Hello. Hello. I sort of thought maybe I should clap myself. Yeah, no, please. If you're happy with any of your answers as you go, feel free to clap. Just a little applause, Mitchie. I love happy time. It's how I feel all the time. Isn't it? We're all a blend of that. And I know you're feeling that because I saw you the other day and they're running you for a good cause we're spreading the good word of salt burn how what's on the caffeinated coherent meter today emerald how you doing i am so caffeinated i'm so caffeinated that at this stage i may as well be nailing kind of a grab of coke a day i mean i think there comes a point when you've had 38 coffees where really it's just it's just a problem but no i'm fine you know luckily i really love talking about this film um and so And I really, really love the cast.

And so, yeah, I'm always happy to talk about it. So let's, I want to give a little context because we've never had kind of the deep dive conversation. And I was such a fan of promising young woman and much of your earlier work. I'm curious, like, where you sit today, is this kind of where you were aiming to be? Has the goal been for a while to be a writer-director crafting these personal, very powerful kind of stories for the big screen? I mean, absolutely, I don't think I could have dreamed it would have been, I don't think I could have dreamed it would have got me here, like in a hotel in front of a green screen in New York pretending to me, you know, it's like kind of like... That's real, Emerald, don't you ruin the illusion. That's her home. I never thought it would get me to hear this very real sitting room that I'm absolutely sitting in.

What I mean to say is that to me, to have a green screen is beyond... That's the goals. Like, I've made it. That's a huge deal for me. And I think, you know, just everything that happened with promising a woman, you know, was just beyond all of our wildest dreams while we were making it. So I feel, yeah, I just feel kind of amazed constantly, honestly, that it's been so, yeah, it's been so amazing.

It was a strange ride, Needles to say, for promising young woman. I was lucky enough to be at the Sundance screening the premiere of it. I spoke to your cast there. And then, of course, this was January 2020. If you do the math, some things occurred pretty soon thereafter. Did you feel like you had, look, you obviously reaped the rewards. I mean, Carrie got the nomination. She almost took home the Oscar.

You took home an Oscar. But I would imagine, I don't know, you probably didn't get to celebrate in a full way with that cast. We were all siloed off. Did it feel that way at the time? Did it feel a little strange? I think, well, I had no frame of reference. It was my first movie. I just had a baby, so, you know, I had a little, I had a kid, and I was pregnant as well

by the time, by the time it all sort of started kicking off. And it was locked down. So it was just everything about the circumstances were completely unprecedented. And my own life had, you know, was changing in every kind of conceivable. way. And so I suppose then I didn't really, yeah, I had no way of knowing what was strange and what was normal. And, you know, it was all upside down. So in many ways, I'm glad that it was the way that it was because it meant that now I'm doing this, now I'm doing this sort of publicity tour. And this obviously is also peculiar because normally the actors would be doing all the stuff that I'm doing,

which would have been like vastly my preference because, you know, you don't really want to centre yourself as a filmmaker like this. It's not kind of natural or useful in lots of ways. But I think that I'm, you know, I was glad that I was able to kind of carry on with my life. Yeah. I just, I wrote and the cast who was so amazing, you know, really helped.

But it meant I could sort of get on with the thing that I wanted to make next, which was Saltburn. Have you stayed in touch? I'm curious with, I know you're obviously in touch with Carrie. She's amazing in this film. Bo Burnham is an enigma to me. I did, I did, he actually did my podcast for Promising Young Woman, and it was like one of the only bits, like, extended conversations he had,

and then he disappeared, and then he came out with his album, right, his comedy album. Has he retired from acting? He's like Daniel DeLewis. Like, what happened to him? I, well, look, it's not, he is, he's an immense. privately private person and so I dend and would never yeah would never kind of want to break his trust by talking about him but he is no I mean he's absolutely one of my favorite people he is wonderful deeply wonderful you know and yeah yeah I think you know like a lot of great

artists he's just you know he just wants to concentrate on making and making things right and he's so good that he can and i'm very excited for whatever he does next before we get to saltburn a couple of other things i'm promising young woman did did your use of stars are blind bring you closer to paris hilton have you broken bread with her have you bonded in a real way we have not broken bread but we have met few times i love her i'm always and have always been from the very beginning, inspired by her fortitude and her grace and her ability to find humour in lots of circumstances and lots of treatment that was, you know,

revoltingly misogynistic and gross. And I think she's an incredibly clever person and an interesting person. And so it was really, It was really wonderful as well that people kind of acknowledged that Stars are Blind is a fucking brilliant song. Yeah. Because that's why it's in there.

It's in there because it's like one of the greats. And I'm so glad that I'm so glad that it very occasionally means that people play it somewhere and it means I can listen to it. You took the irony out of it. I feel like it had like quotation marks around it. And now it's kind of like, oh, no, we can just acknowledge it's actually a really cool, fun song. And also, do you know what, I don't like irony in general. I think it's a real pop-out and it's a really, it's a very inhibiting thing for making stuff, actually.

Like, I don't think irony is helpful because it's a lie. You know, it's double talk. You're kind of, you're pussyfooting. And again, that's the thing for me that I, you know, try as much as I can do is say, like, you know, we do not have to, things do not have to be all done. in the same way. Right. You can be earnest. You can earnestly love things.

You can be unsuttle. You can be overwrought. You can be melodramatic and gothic. You can be all those things. There is space in the world for art is too much of a like absolutely wanky phrase. But there's space in the world for things to be expressed in all manner of different ways. And I think we're still very, we're still, you know, very preoccupied with a certain mode and method of storytelling.

And so I, yeah, I try as much as I can to just make things that feel like, I don't know, the sort of things that I respond to and responded to when I was younger and hope that that finds it sort of connection. There is like, there's this like kind of ruthless honesty in these two films, like the messiness of desire, of wanting, of love. of lust and it's like it's it we're all you know a lot of us most of us sadly for whatever reason feel shame about these these feelings when in fact literally every human being feels what you experience what the characters experience in saltburn but isn't shame part of the fun isn't shame makes it more a necessary part of why something is sexy right because that's the other thing too right is that right is that you can't have one without the other, really, not what it gets super, super, you know, the thing that is transgressive, the threshold being crossed is often what makes something so powerful. And that is really what the Gothic is about. It is about revulsion and desire colliding. It's about it is about giving yourself over to something that frightens you. And so it's interesting, like actually, in some way, is why watching this in a room full of people is so important.

Because you don't really have that sense of, you don't have the sense of kind of potent arousal and shame and confusion and revulsion on your own. You know, because you may as well go on, you know, we're all doing all sorts of things on our own that are absolutely shocking. I mean, not me because my life's incredibly boring, but not in that room.

You wouldn't know. Oh, not in this room. Yeah, you know what's behind the green screen. It's actually a dungeon. It's my own. It's no. And so like that's the thing for me is that all of that stuff is good. It's good to be pushing ways.

And that's why I think, you know, we look at period dramas as romances. Increasingly all of the romantic fiction, all the romantic movies and TV is set in the past. And I think that's because there were so many more boundaries and that we understand when those boundaries are kind of pushed, right? You understand that if a glance lingers too long in Regency England that everyone's going to fuck and it's a disaster and it might ruin a woman's life, not a man's course, he'll be fine. But now, you know, we are all of us kind of, you know, embracing the kink, embracing the things that interest us and stuff. And it's, and it's more, wonderfully, it's kind of, yeah, everyone's more comfortable with it, but in terms of dramatic

narratives, yeah, you're looking to find the thing that gets inside you in a way that's sort of truly sexy and disturbing. What were those transgressive films for you as a young person? What were the ones that kind of shook your worldview? Well, mine were the ones that now I recognize are like very troubling. because they were sort of, you know, something like the crush with Alicia Silverstone and Carrie Elwis. Right.

Where she's like a 13 year old girl. And of course, at the time, I was like 10. So she seemed really old. And now I'm Carrie Alwis's age from the film. And I'm like, well, this is not a good film at all. I shouldn't have shaped my entire personality on this film. You know, there was the crush.

There were things like secretary, which I was obsessed with, you know, cruel intentions, the dreamers, stealing beauty, you know, I think... Did Bram Stoker's Dracula feel like that for you? I'm curious. Totally. I mean, Bram Stoker's Dracula is just one of my all-time favorite, favorites. I mean, that movie is insanely good.

Also, shout out to Dracula, Dead and Loving it, the spoof that they're also terrific in a different way. But also, like, it was also the feeling of having a crush on the characters you weren't supposed to have their crush on, like wanting to know what Jaffar's deal was. You know, thinking like scars, scars kind of interesting. I bet he could change it. I do, yeah. Yeah. It's not just the thing of, it's not just that thing of like sexy movies, but it's the way that you as a young person, as a person as a human in general, respond to respond to things you're told that you should like this lovely golden prince or princess whatever but you're like but who's that horrible like little thing the gnome in the corner i want that one

hey michael hey tom big news to share it right yes huge monumental earth shaking heartbeat sound effect big meat is back that's right after a brief snack nap we're coming back we're picking snacks we're eating snacks we're raiding snacks Like the snackologist We were born to be Mates is back Mike and Tom eat snacks

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You might know me from the league Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters We come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, must-season, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Greece to the Dark Night.

So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to hit the follow button. Very little, yeah, exactly, that little sort of goblin. I'm like, hmm. Well, yeah, I heard you. I was telling you, I loved your conversation with Brett Goldstein a couple years back. and I think you professed your love for Busemi in Armageddon.

That tells you all you need to know. You didn't go for Affleck. Oh, no. No, it was Bishemi. I mean, Buchemy and everything forever. Obsessed. I mean, there's certain roles. I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, Billy Madison, him putting his lipstick on to ELO's telephone line, and Billy Madison is scorched in my memory. This one will be scorched in many a young person's memory, I think. How fully formed did Saltburn come? Does it start with the character, an image, just a mash of ideas? It starts with a character, which usually is accompanied by an image. And so, and it's just, I suppose, it's a bit spoilery, the one that I, the first thing that came to me.

But, but really it was Oliver. And it was Oliver, and it was a, and it was a young man kind of insisting, and it was like the first moment of the film, first birth of the film, is I wasn't in love with him. And, you know, my feeling was just if you start a conversation like that, you know, you're immediately announcing yourself as somebody who's, you know, like a line to our. Yeah, lying to us or lying to themselves. And so that's a kind of interesting. And I suppose that early on I realized it was part of that, yeah, British country house sort of gothic tradition. just because of the nature of the way he was talking, he was talking to me.

It felt like a first person narrative. And then what happens is, you know, I just live in the world. I live with him and I live in the world for a long, long time. So I, you know, I went to Saltburn and I spent years there just kind of with all the characters and, you know, and it becomes, it's a sort of, it's both kind of narratively in character, but it's also kind of texture as well. It's kind of like, what do the rooms feel like?

Are they hot, are they cold? Do they smell? Do they, what does the grass feel like? It's all that kind of sensory. It's like sensory as well. If you're writing in your head, which I do, it can be as like sensory as it is like intellectual, I guess. You're kind of feeling things very much from a sort of physical and emotional

point of view, which is really how I like to start anything. And then over the years it becomes, it's a bit, Like, and I say this as a person who really does not like immersive theatre, I respect it and God bless everyone doing it, but I find it truly excruciating. But for me, that is kind of what it is. It's like I'm, I'm there. And it's only when I've seen, been in every room a thousand times that I feel like every conversation, every version of every conversation has happened. And it's not changing. It sort of ceases to change for a long time. Then I know, okay, it's ready to. I can. write it down now. And for the uninitiated, I do want to give some little context. So Oliver, played by the great Barakiogan, the young man in Oxford, who, yes, becomes, we don't really know what the desire is exactly, but there is a desire around Felix, played by Jacob Allorty, and goes to his estate and kind of becomes enmeshed in this very unique family. And

wackiness ensues, that's probably not the right. do you know what when I had an interview was that your elevator pitch was that it I had truly I had a um a Q&A I did a Q&A after a screening of the movie a few weeks ago and the the girl who was interviewing me said um well you're a wacky gal I was like oh okay I mean sure okay I mean yeah but it's just it's It's like, I think, I hope it's, it's a film about, like, how all of us feel, which is that you go to college or, you know, you go to a new place and you have this opportunity to, like, you think, like, you're going to be the sexiest,

you're going to, your life's going to begin. You're going to finally be the person you want to be, and then you get to that place and you realize, like, oh, no, you're just another dork. Right. Like, and it's about how we, yeah, and he, and Oliver sees this, this boy, Felix, and then the group, his group of friends to, and he's just like, the center of the universe, he's beautiful, and he has everything. And Oliver, you know, at first has disdain for him.

And then, of course, their worlds collide, and he can't help, but, like, immediately fall for his charms. And then, you know, they become friends and it kind of carries on from there. But I think we all know what that feels like to want to be cool, to want to be unique and special and sexy and all of those things. Like, it's, in that way, it's, I think it's a very, like, relatable movie. 100%. Does that feeling, which is very much tied, I think, especially to the ages we're seeing these characters in, but it also never does go away.

Like, do you feel that, look, you have an Oscar, a prosperous career, a family? Do you feel desire and envy? Is it, I mean, it's not cool to say that, but I think we all feel it. It's not, do you know what? It's really interesting, because I do try to be honest about these things. I don't feel envy. it's not one of I feel lots of horrible things

envy isn't one of them because I don't think that there's a finite amount of success in the world so I don't believe that if somebody else has something it's not taking it away from you yeah yeah but that is not to say that I am not power hungry

obsessed with being fuckable you know all of the things that we all are right right of course of course you want there's no like there is no human on earth who is telling the truth who says they don't want people to think they're funny and cool and clever and sexy and whatever like that's just all of us like is there anyone who goes into a room hoping that people will think they're boring and ugly and stupid like what a glorious way to be though not to have any expectations

or hopes so i just be like i'm fine oh i don't know what that feels like I have no, I am not, I have no center. It only comes from outside. I'm just an amorphous blob. I don't have a soul. That's why we're connecting today. How much did you resent or love your name growing up? Because you can't be a boring Emerald Finnell.

With the name like that, you have to be an interesting person. Yeah, I don't know that I'm interesting, actually. I think that, it's well look I should first say that I love my parents deeply and I love my name and I think it's all the things perhaps that I am

which is unironic and unsubtle and kind of slightly over the top I well firstly my friends all call me M or M so it's sort of that that's always been the case

but like the thing that I suppose I minded a bit when I was a teenager was it made me very identifiable so when I disgraced myself at some part or other which was I inevitably did hard to pin on that other emerald yeah hard to pin on someone else you know various graces but um I mean look I love it's my it's not it's part of my it's part of who you are isn't it? And I love it and I and I suppose it was only really that I became

a bit older that I realised you know and it's not just you know it's just not it's not it's the way we all are. It's suddenly the realization that the way that we think the way that we identify ourselves is very different to how the world connects with you

you know so that's so you're kind of you have to you know try as much as you can to just be comfortable with that Like, I kind of had, I realized, like, a while ago, like, I have, I just have no control over the kind of assumptions that people make. Right. And so you kind of have to, like, slightly let it go. You also have one of my favorite IMDB trivia notations I've seen in some time that I don't know if it's true or not.

But it says here, when she was seven, she told her parents when she grew up, she wanted to write stories about murder and to live in America. Yeah. I have a video. I have a video of it. My mum sent it to me the night before, the night before I started making promising a woman, she sent me a video and we didn't have a camera. So she must have borrowed it off.

It was like, it was, it was all my, I think, a seventh or eighth birthday. She was planning on doing birthday interviews with me and my sister every year and then, you know, like life happened. So it was just this one and it's just me. Yeah, and I just said, she said, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I said, I want to, well, actually I said,

I want to be an actress and live in America. and I want to write stories about murder I mean mission accomplished yeah my husband was like the psychotic single-minded pursuit was quite intense and it was I don't know why

I don't know why even at that age I was obsessed with murder and sex not that I even understood what it was but I was aware of something troubling I was always kind of interested in it trying to kind of glean as much as I could about it because I knew it was sort of scary, but kind of interesting.

So I was going to say, it must have brought you tremendous joy to jump into something like Killing Eve, which brings a lot of those loves together. Totally, yeah. I mean, it was really fun. I mean, that was very, very, very grueling, though. I mean, it was incredible, but it was

when I started on killing Eve I was just in the writer's room and it hadn't come out yet and Phoebe was making flea back so the plan had always been that she would do the first season then she was going off to do flea bag too and so

and so when we started it wasn't it hadn't come out yet so nobody knew that it would be like the hugest thing ever and then because it was so huge

the studio pushed it forward or brought it forward I never know whether it's push back or pull forward. But basically we had like suddenly two months less time. Got it. And because it was Britain, it was just, I think it was just, it just caught everyone off guard. And so we ended up having for a little time.

So I think at one point I was like, I was right. I think I was working in the middle of that series. I was working kind of 20 hours a day just to, just to cover the, because you don't have, you know, and so the thing that I remember most, I'm so proud of it and I love it and I love that series and I love that show and I love everyone who worked on it.

But the thing I remember was was literally like crouching over a bin eating pizza out of the trash because I had no time to like get food and there was no food. I was like... Had a show on TV and there she's in the corner. She's a sexy woman of the world

taken Hollywood by storm. Crouched over bin eating trash pizza. So it was kind of but it was incredible. It was incredible. And also it was the first time, like, you know, it was, I was promoted to the kind of showrunner of that, which was like beyond my wildest dreams, but also like, fucking hell, a rude awakening on how to like, you know, get like, you know, learning on the job. But, you know, I remember the first day of shooting, they shut down the Gar de Lest, the big train station in Paris, you know, because it's that, it was that opening scene of the second series or kind of one of the opening scenes of Eve, remember she's got a knife in her pocket. And she's about. to go through security. And I just remember thinking, like, oh, my God, I can't believe, I can't believe this

is real. Like, I cannot believe this has happened. It was amazing. I've been lucky enough to get to know Jody, Comer, amazing over the years who is just, like, can do anything pretty much on the planet. I'm sure you saw Prima Fasci, the show. I mean, she's just unbelievable. He's insanely talented.

Did you? she was pretty frank with me like she you know the divisive ending and i know you had left killing eve by then but did you have a perspective on how they wrapped it up and villain else fate goodbye summer movies hello fall i'm anthony devony and i'm his twin brother james we host raiders of the lost podcast the ultimate movie podcast and we are ecstatic to break down late summer and early fall releases we have leonari caprio leading a revolution in one battle after another timothy salome playing power ping pong in Marty Supreme. Let's not forget Emma Stone

and Jorgos Lantamos' Bougonia. Dwayne Johnson, he's coming for that Oscar in The Smashing Machine, Spike Lee and Denzel teaming up again, plus Daniel DeLuis' return from retirement. There will be plenty of blockbusters to chat about, too. Tron Ares looks exceptional, plus Mortal Kombat 2,

and Edgar writes, The Running Man, starring Glenn Powell. Search for Raiders of the Lost Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. How does love work exactly? What makes something funny? How does noise affect your health? These are just a sample of the fascinating topics we discuss on my podcast, Something You Should Know.

We bring you leading experts on topics important to you, things you can use in your life and that will fascinate you. We deliver three episodes a week and have over a thousand episodes available to listen. So get listening to Something You Should Know, wherever you get your podcasts. Do you know what? I actually never would because I think that I know how hard everyone worked on that show. I know how difficult a job it was for everyone, for everyone. And so I would, I'm just so impressed by everyone who worked on that show. And, you know, and I think, and I, and I have nothing but I love and respect for all the amount of them. You know, you know, the degree of difficulty. I get it. Totally. Yeah, I really do know the degree of difficulty. And so I think,

Yeah, so I think they did a great job. Okay, it's official. We are very much in the final sprint to election day. And face it, between debates, polling releases, even court appearances. It can feel exhausting, even impossible to keep up with. I'm Brad Milkey. I'm the host of Start Here, the Daily Podcast from ABC News. And every morning my team and I get you caught up on the day's news in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand with just enough context so you can listen, get it, and go on with your day.

So, kickstart your morning. Start Smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel overwhelming. I haven't heard for a while. It was on the promising young woman train that Zatanna came up for. for you. Did you write the script? Is it still out there with the new regime at DC? Is it still potentially happening? No. It's not happening. It was, you know what? I loved. I met. So this was all before promising women, actually. So this was something I was working before promising young woman. And it was when JJ Abrams was had just, I think just arrived at Warner Brothers and was going to like reboot the dark universe and they were going to take you know they were going to kind of make this new kind of like dark sort of villain villain universe or sort of hero villain

universe and I just thought he was the coolest um his team a bad robot Hannah his his producer bad robot was so cool and so interesting and because I love genre of all kinds you know so much of promising women and salt Bernard like you know prodding at a specific genre that I'm definitely interested in like, oh, okay, I don't know huge amount about the superhero genre. It's not a genre that I naturally gravitate towards. So I was like, okay, well, I'd love to know, like, how does, how does one make a movie like that for people like me who maybe don't know so much and wouldn't necessarily buy a

ticket the first time around? So it's sort of that kind of thing. I'm like, okay, this is interesting. And Zatana is just a really, really cool character. And yeah, but I think it just like everything, I did write it. It was complicated because I think, you know, the regime, like the things, you know, it's all the, it's a classic studio stuff. Yeah.

It's classic studio stuff. JJ's incredible. His team are incredible. And I think it just, I wrote in the end, I think a script that is reasonably demented. I would expect now. in a good way I think it would have been like kind of but in the end I think the whole universe got kind of you know was changed and so but you know that's fine I love writing I love writing I love working with people so it was kind of really fun to do in the end whether whether or not it would

have been like remotely makeable that's not your job your job is just to go bat shit crazy and write the story that works for you. I was only ever slated to write it. So, you know, it was not like this $500 billion movie with like this 28 minute sex scene in the sky. That wasn't, that's not real. That's not real. And was nemesis ever a real thing? Mark Miller said that you were, you had written a like a draft or something on his nemesis. I did. No, no. I mean, nemesis was absolutely brilliant. But I did. No, I just did a, I just did a couple of weeks on on that one that was a kind of um that was i mean it's it's brilliant i loved it but it's kind of a um yeah it was i did some work on somebody else's script for them for the studio and

yeah but i but i did i mean i not to say that i didn't love it i just don't like to take credit for something that i haven't really been instrumental in when somebody else is work i mean you do have look only two feature films in but you have like a very specific path and voice that you have already established. And I would imagine, I mean, you tell me, like, is this the path to continue on for you? Because you're probably getting very interesting, you know, temptations of those kind of movies we just talked about, the comic things and the big, the big scale things. But, like, I would imagine you're in a place where you could do the, you know, $20 to $40 million, like, drama because your name is now becoming a little bit of a brand. And I mean that in a

positive way, not a crappy, you know, crappy one. I will be coming out. with my brand, my personal brand of tampons, surely. Finally. It's a downtown market in the celebrity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, philosophy-wise, in terms of crafting the career forward, like, are you kind of very single-minded on the kind of films you want to make in the next five, 10 years?

Yes. Yeah. I can't, what I've realized now is I can't, I can, I'm always happy to kind of like do a pass for somebody that I love or a studio for things and that's always really fun but in terms of my own things like scripts that are mine

then I then I do those to write and direct and I what I do what I will do go you know as long as people let me is I and I'll do after this is go away write the thing I want to write nobody ever knows what it is

that was the case of salt but nobody knew what it was and And nobody had any idea until I, you know, I sent it to my agents and managers when it was finished. So they get, so they have the experience as close as, yeah, as close to watching the movie is, which is like you can really see if it works or not, I think, if you do it that way. And also, I like the pleasure of that. You know, there's a huge amount of pleasure to me about the kind of it being your own thing in secret and private that, any motivation that you have is purely, it's not financial or, you know, you don't have

anyone sitting over you. It's just you and what you want to write about and what you think is interesting and complicated and the thing that you want to get out of your system. You know, and then what, and then it gives you so much freedom because you can say what I said with saltburn, which was, you know, this is it. This is the thing I want to make next. If anyone else wants to make it with me, I'm so happy. If nobody does, great, I'll go away and write something else. And it's wonderful and it's and I don't think I can work any other way. I don't I can't do the thing. I can't do this traditional studio mode. I can't pitch an idea and then pitch an outline and then write 10 outlines and then do six drafts. I can't do it. It's it's killer. And there are

some people who love that. I just think you end up with you just. You just end up with something that has compromised it's diluted it's just it what it is streamlined in a way that I find it's not naughty you you get everything ironed out quite quickly and and so by by the time you even come to shooting the stuff that's complicated that that that is kind of um interesting kind of has to go and that I don't know so so yeah so I'll just do that and I'd And I think I like having a reasonable budget. Like I like having a lower end budget because then you're all working really hard.

I like the constraint. I like the boundaries of having not, the idea of being able to reshoot endlessly. The idea of having endless money and time makes me just think it gets flaccid and flabby and you want something to be taught. And also if it's a bit fucking messy, fine. Right.

All of the films I love are messy. all of the films from 35 years ago that we think of as being the masterpiece of their time have, you know, 20-minute stretches in the middle that are kind of dull, all bits that really don't work, or characters that are like, eh, every single one of those movies. And I think our relationship with film now is so, you know,

we tend to kind of treat things like death by a thousand cuts. We judge it by the thing we want. wanted to see not the thing it is. And I think like, you know, so it's, it's just trying to be determined to, to make things that are, yeah, they're not completely without any friction. Because then you just slide out, don't you, with the cinema and you're like, eh? Well, it's no surprise. You were proselytizing to me the other day, Bo is afraid. We, you know.

I love it so much. That is a movie. That is a movie. Who were, yeah. I just want before before you have to run to your 300 other conversations actors on your short list because you seem to gravitate towards I mean I love Barry I know you're a big fan of killing of the sacred deer he's amazing in this one too barry keogun live wire who can just kind of do anything do you have a short list I mean do you write with actors in mind I don't write with actors in mind but I have a list of actors that I'm obsessed with at the moment I'd like love to work with Josh O'Connor as a, as a director. I think he's so, so special. I mean, Zendaya's kind of a remarkable force of nature, isn't she? Also, I'm obsessed with Skyler. He's in the Regist Gemstones. Skylar Gis. I don't actually know. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm,

I'm Rusty on Regist Jemstones. He's in my favorite other film Vacation, 2015. Oh, the remake, the one with at Helms. Yeah, yeah, got it. Okay, I'll look it up, okay. Oh, I know here. He's a younger actor, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Younger actor, he was in, he was in, he's been in loads of stuff. This is terrible, but like he, I watched, I was watching something with him in last night again, and he's in Lickrish Pizza and I was like, ooh, he's really good. He's one of those actors that's just like, really, really good.

Yeah. I mean, there are so many people. The list is like 50, 50 people long. I'm going to end with this in honor of happy second fused. You kind of just said a few, but an actor who makes you happy. You see them on screen. Oh, God. Can I say Robert Mitchum?

Sure. Sure. A little cape fear makes you just, makes you thrilled? It makes me so thrilled. The Hunter. Are you kidding? I told you. I mean, these are the people I love. Got you pegged. Okay. Movie that makes you sad. Melancholia. Never cried so much. Existential crisis. Had to land the floor for two hours. Beautiful. Loved it every second of it. Devastating. And finally, food that makes you confused. Raisins in salad. Truly, just fuck off.

I, life ruining, actually. Is it the sweetness? You don't want the sweet in your salad? You don't want to like a... I don't want sweet in a salad, but I can deal with an apple, sure. I'm a grown-up, but my God, a raisin, a little wizened, wibbly wobbly. Right. No, no, no, no, no.

Okay. Not coming out in the, for the raisin lobby. She's got her tampons that she's going to be selling, but not the raisins. Yeah. No. Yeah, what I will also, I'll have a raisin brand, which is just an empty. T-box. It's trying to destroy the joy for us raising lovers out there.

Emeril, this has been a pleasure. Congratulations on Saltburn. Everybody should check it out. As I told you the other day, I love all your work. I'm obsessed with this one. I'll see it many more times. Two down. Many more to go.

And good luck staying, you know, healthy and sane through the madness. But it's all, again, all for a good cause. All for a good cause. Thank you so much. Lovely to see you. Good to see you. Enjoy your weird green sitting room. fix it. Thank you. I will. Bye.

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