‘Saltburn’ - Interview with Production Designer Suzie Davies
Emerald Fennell took a bold swing to followup her Oscar winning film, Promising Young Woman, with Saltburn. Fennell crafted a perverted fairytale of manic infatuation and greed starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, and Alison Oliver. The gothic narrative follows two college students at Oxford as a mystery unravels one summer. Offscreen was lucky enough to speak to the Production Designer, Suzie Davies, about her work on the film.
Jillian Chilingerian: So I love this film. I've seen it twice so far, multiple viewings will come in the future.
Suzie Davies: Yeah, it's a lot of processing, isn't it?
Jillian Chilingerian: I really want to talk about the character of Saltburn, defining that, and creating those interiors. What was that process like working with Emerald to come together and then with your team and your vision?
Suzie Davies: Sure. So when I read the script and realized that a lot of the film is going to take place in Saltburn, this fictional country house, I thought I'd be going on location scouts trying to search for this house. I've done lots of period films, I've filmed in a lot of the period properties in and around London and in the south of the UK and I just thought I don't think I've seen this property yet. We needed to go and find it and prepared myself for many hours driving up and around the counties of the UK and we found it on day one. I think Emerald already knew a little bit about the property and when we drove up along the long drive and saw Saltburn in the distance, I had an Oliver moment, it was like, wow this is amazing. And then to find a family that lived there, that was up for us to do what we did to their amazing property. It was like an absolute treat for a production designer because obviously, it's lovely to build things but I find working in a real environment and augmenting it and changing it gives quirks and idiosyncrasies to a visual style that helps our storytelling so they allowed me to paint rooms and change pictures, put wallpaper up and make bedrooms into bathrooms and bathrooms into dressing rooms. We sort of had not a free rein but a much easier route than perhaps working in a national trust or Heritage property.
Jillian Chilingerian: Oh my gosh, that is insane. There's this idea of the British countryside, everyone has that dream or imagination of that life and so seeing that, like play out in a very devious way, when you first arrived, there is such an unease because as the audience, we don't know what exactly is going to partake. Finding those different elements of the colors, the mismatched furniture, the paintings, we take that tour with Felix and create a sense of amazement, but that unease about this place and we don't know.
Suzie Davies: I think most of our understanding, or what we see in a cinematic world is we've seen Downton Abbey and Britain and all sorts of types of projects of characters in there. You know, not contemporary versions of people living in those environments. Of course, they do. We found them and, well wrote about them and so it was really fun to play with a relatively contemporary family living there and juxtapose this historical, ancient family that has lived in this house for hundreds of years. So we have the artwork from the 1500s or 1600s and 1700s all the way to contemporary art and blending in the sort of tacky, cheap crisps and sweets and cigarettes and the just everydayness that we all have the crumbs on the floor the I love the idea that also they have a slight disrespect or not disrespect but just unknowing. They're filthy rich, so disgustingly rich. They don't understand what putting their ordinary cigarette out or having an overflown Lalique glass ashtray. So that, probably means vases do have flowers in them, but probably there's a packet of crisps that's been shoved in there as well. So it was about playing with all of the modern detritus of the world and blending it with this gorgeous, affluent, sumptuous environment that they live in and it just blending, finding that balance and Emerald's script spoke about that, and we tried to find that balance. I think we did, inflatable watermelon in a real pond but it works. It looks amazing and those sorts of things are really fun to play with.
Jillian Chilingerian: I love that there's a still of the exterior and then they're on the grass and the the pool floats are there. Just so funny, I couldn't imagine that being in this space. Kind of that juxtaposition of glamour and commonality.
Suzie Davies: I think exactly, and they're reading Harry Potter. They should be reading Kafka or something, but no, they're reading Harry Potter.
Jillian Chilingerian: The Harry Potter books are so brilliant. I'm assuming the Maze was already there, but like the statues the outside of Saltburn, what was that process?
Suzie Davies: With minotaurs and all that entails, I built some of the runs of the corridors of hedging and then CG, sort of manipulated. We had an international maze designer who designed the maze because then was very clear that it needed accents. So when you look at the top shot there are two routes a cheats route and a long route to get to the center and then we made that wooden block as well. So they have a real maze, but not really because it's manipulated in the beauty and magic of filmmaking. But the editor then puts it together perfectly with a little sprinkling of CG. So that was great to do. The minotaurs, in particular, were fun. Making sure a maze could feel romantic, that centerpiece could feel romantic. We had roses growing up the stone wall, but then you have this hulking minotaur at the top so we wanted to make it feel slightly sinister. We use an artist called Nicola Hicks, she very gratefully allowed us to use her work as an inspiration for the sculptures that we made there and she's a very prolific, amazing sculptor that does contemporary works of art now, so it was important to have those contemporary aspects within our Saltburn world. It's not just the historical artwork, it's modern artwork as well, this generation, this Catton family has collected art all through the centuries it was great following that journey of art.
Jillian Chilingerian: I love seeing the accumulation of the centuries, establishing them as if they're fictional but could be real. The nature of the family room that we first meet them all on because I think so many times you can watch a film and you're like, this was the first time they stepped into this house, but this, they could live there.
Suzie Davies: That's what we aim for. I want the actors to feel so comfortable when they walk on set that they know what their environment is so, they can do their work and, if I've done my work, they have a platform to settle in and off we go with the storytelling
Jillian Chilingerian: I guess it could be a foreshadowing of the little box Oliver stumbles upon with the marionette puppet.
Suzie Davies: Again, the joyous thing about that is when we went to see the original location on the first walk around, they had one of these boxes not with people in it but a weird little box of the Saltburn in a 3d three-dimensional sort of little theater box basically. Emerald then spun on that and wanted our little marionette people in it and we then made it. It was great fun making because we had a fantastic, brilliant modelmaking team who built it exactly. We were really struggling to get the movement and actually, the manic movement. We need to be able to control it, but Emerald loves the manic moment that it was slightly broken, that there's just something off. It was useful for us because we were struggling to make it smooth down, but it worked. It was lovely and crazy when you see a clown can be quite scary and I think our characters in the box looked all slightly unhinged and they were coming off the little motors, it's such a funny touch. Then again, setting it up at the end with the rocks. I was like, he's such a weirdo.
Jillian Chilingerian: Perfect casting. There's this unease of adding these little touches. This is like the life that Oliver wants and the atmosphere of what Saltburn represents to him as this desire.
Suzie Davies: Isn't it? Sort of desire and addiction in his behavior is really interesting. the great thing about that is that because Emerald wrote it and directed it, you have a very clear vision when you're making it, you don't have to go to a director and then they have to go and think about it with a writer. It's there. She's clicked, she knows the answers, she knows what works for her story. It was really great because I think a lot of what we ended up with was, is absolutely in there in the beginning, it doesn't change. She had all that desire and that weirdness and that otherness that Barry brings into that script.
Jillian Chilingerian: I love that. Were there any moments while you were in the production process that you couldn't wait to see how this turned out?
Suzie Davies: All of it and everything. When I went to see it about three weeks ago, I was really surprised, just because as a designer the last day of the shoot, is usually the last bit of work I do. Sometimes I'm involved in the post-production, but not in any great depth, maybe just for an opinion. So I'd been separated from this film for six months until I saw it and it blew me away. You come out wanting to talk about what just happened. The best way to go in is not to tell anyone anything about it. I love the maze. The shepherd's pie scene is just amazing. The performances of that cast, they knock it out of the park, the cinematography, the sound, the soundtrack, the editing, all the bits that we aren't around when we're making it that come after. It just felt like everyone got it. Every department did their thing. And we've ended up with this amazing piece. I felt was a very collaborative process. It was good fun. And I think we knew we were making something special. This felt special when we were making it and it's great that it's getting a bit of buzz about it and people are finding it interesting.
Jillian Chilingerian: Well, that was my last question. But I definitely agree there is such a specialness about this film and everything coming together. It's like watching a painting coming to life in the most wicked, twisted, but also a romantic way, and I think your work speaks to that.
Suzie Davies: Thank you. Thank you. I think the analogy of a picture is good because I wanted it to feel like an oil painting that is melted by the end, so it was great that you said that.
You can read our review of Saltburn, here.