A couple of months ago, Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan sat down with British Vogue to discuss their recently released film, Saltburn.
Directed by Emerald Fennell, Saltburn — which is available to stream on Amazon Prime — is a dark comedy/psychological thriller that follows two university students in England: Felix Catton (Jacob) and Oliver Quick (Barry).
In fact, Barry recently revealed that the infamous graveyard scene — which saw his character stripping and humping a grave — wasn’t initially in the script.
“The gravesite was sort of like a collaboration with me and Emerald,” Barry told Variety in November.
“On the day, I was like, ‘Can I try something?’” he recalled. “I wanted to see what the next level of obsession was. So I asked for a closed set. I wanted to see where it went. It could have gone completely wrong, but I think it moved the story.”
But recently, Jacob inadvertently wound up sparking a whole load of discourse around the idea of another A-list actor playing Oliver instead: Timothée Chalamet.
In his and Barry’s joint British Vogue interview, Jacob noted that director Emerald was who drew him toward Saltburn in the first place. He then quipped, “Then she said she wanted Timothée Chalamet for it, and I said, ‘Have you thought about Barry Keoghan?’” Meanwhile, Barry burst into a fit of laughter at Jacob’s remark.
Before long, Jacob’s fleeting comment left social media users super divided as they wound up discussing whether they felt Barry or Timmy was better suited for the role — and this week, the discourse resurfaced on X (formerly known as Twitter) after @PopCrave tweeted the quote.
On one hand, several users agreed that Barry was “perfect for the role,” given his disturbing portrayal of Martin in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Emerald herself has mentioned that this performance partly influenced her decision to cast Barry in Saltburn.
“oliver quick is literally martin (the killing of a sacred deer) with adjustments [sob emoji] you’re telling me she wrote saltburn and thought of TIMMY???” one person tweeted.
Someone else suggested, “It's not that Timothée would have been a bad choice, cause he's TOP of his game, but Timothée has Call me by your name already. There would have been comparisons and it would have changed the vibe completely.”
“all love to timmy, but this would have been an extreme case of miscasting,” another user wrote.
On the other hand, however, some users suggested that Timothée would have been a great choice for Saltburn, given that the shocking scenes might have been all the more surprising and unexpected if performed by him.
“That’s why I wish Timmy did the film instead. It’s almost expected of Barry to perform all the salacious and evil things Oliver does in Saltburn. But for Timothée to do all that???? Now THAT would’ve been shocking and surprising,” someone tweeted.
“Really liked barry’s performance but the fact that he’s playing Oliver telegraphs the entirety of the film for me,this is basically a redux of the killing of a sacred deer,” another person agreed. “I think a chalamet type would have made ~the betrayal of it all ~ land better.”
