Jacob Elordi Slams the ‘Prudish’ Reaction to ‘Saltburn’ Bathtub Masturbation Scene

It’s been nearly two years since Saltburn was released, but the bathtub scene is still living rent-free. However, Jacob Elordi isn’t too happy about how it was perceived.

“I actually think it shows me just how, I guess, prudish we are,” Elordi, 28, shared during an appearance on the Entertainment Weekly “Awardist” podcast on Thursday, November 6, when asked about the most viral moment in the film.

In the movie, Elordi’s character, Felix Catton, masturbates while taking a bath. After he’s finished, costar Barry Keoghan’s character, Oliver Quick, steps into the tub and drinks the remainder of the bathwater, even licking the drain. The scene is still one of the most talked about in recent film history and inspired a line of candles that smell like “Jacob Elordi’s Bathwater.”

Elordi, for his part, thinks there are “far more extreme things in cinema” that he’s seen over the years.

“There’s more alarming things in the top 10 streamed remakes of crime documentaries on every streaming platform,” he added. “I think that’s much more alarming, the kind of horrible joy that we all get from watching children be mutilated. That’s what was interesting to me.”

Elordi previously said he was “really excited” about that scene when first reading writer and director Emerald Fennell’s script.

“You don’t really see things like that in mainstream movies a lot of the time,” he told Stream Wars in December 2023. “It’s just great that Emerald was allowed to push those boundaries and expose people like that, I think.”

Initially, Elordi said he tried to “hide away” from the reactions online.

“I went to a screening of the picture in Brisbane when it first played and it was unbelievable because everybody was engaged and gasping at the screen,” he recalled at the time. “I haven’t been in a movie like that in a really, really long time.”

He also joked about the scene at length during several moments of the Saltburn press tour.

“I was very proud,” he quipped during a November 2023 interview with Variety. “I was very proud to have Barry Keoghan guzzling it like that.”

Fennell also recalled shooting the moment on set — and revealed that cinematographer Linus Sandgren’s reaction had to be edited out of the film.

“When Barry started to rim the drain, Linus squealed like a little girl, and we had to edit it out, and he was like, ‘F***,’” she told Entertainment Weekly in December 2023. “That is the thing — if in the room on the monitor you are all feeling like, ‘Whoa, holy s***,’ then it’s the most exciting thing in the world.”

Fennell added, “It’s not just that something’s incredibly sexy, or at least I think it is; it has an involuntary physical response actually, that even when you are not physically supposed to respond vocally because you’re filming, you do that because it’s something that you can’t help but respond to. And it’s those moments where you know that you are getting to something that is incredible.”