Rosamund Pike Says She’s ‘Bewildered’ by Love for Her ‘Saltburn’ Role

variety.com:

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards and Features Editor When Rosamund Pike sat down to tea with Emerald Fennell to discuss “Saltburn,” the filmmaker’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning “Promising Young Woman,” she ordered coffee.

Fennell asked if she was going to drink it black, to which Pike stated that she was going to add milk. Recalls Pike, “So she said, ‘Oh, thank God.

I think people who have their coffee black have no love in their life.’ And I just thought, ‘Okay, first test passed.’”Pike had already read the script her agent described as “pretty delicious,” a decadent tale of obsession and excess that finds young Oxford student Oliver (Barry Keoghan) ingratiating himself into the family of classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi.) Fennell wanted to offer Pike the role of Lady Elspeth Catton, Felix’s wildly out of touch mother who loves to take in charity cases — in addition to Oliver, her friend “Poor Dear” Pamela (Carey Mulligan) is crashing at the titular manor for the summer after breaking up with a “malignantly ugly” Russian billionaire.Pike has long excelled at playing morally questionable characters we nonetheless root for, such in her Oscar nominated turn in “Gone Girl” or her Golden Globe-winning role in “I Care a Lot.” While Elspeth is more clueless than conniving, Pike continually steals scenes by saying the most horribly insensitive things – and we love her for it.As “Saltburn” hits Amazon Prime, Variety spoke with Pike about finding empathy for her character, improvising as Elspeth and what a spin-off with Mulligan could look like. Are you surprised by how much people are loving Elspeth?I’m totally astonished!