Singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor “survived” watching Saltburn with her whole family — including her mom and son — just to hear her 2001 song “Murder on the Dancefloor” take center stage.
“I got that feeling that I find really delicious where afterwards you just want to think about the movie and talk about it,” Ellis-Bextor, 44, told NME in an interview published on Wednesday, January 10. “There was a whole atmosphere to it, and I just wanted to get back into that headspace as quick as I could. It was funny and had so many great songs in there, so it was special to be a small part of that.”
Saltburn stars Barry Keoghan as Oliver Quick, a slightly out-of-place University of Oxford student who forms an unhealthy obsession with rich classmate Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). When Oliver is invited to the Catton family mansion, named Saltburn, he’s faced with Felix’s eccentric relatives, who seem to have a loose grasp on reality. Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe and Carey Mulligan also star.
Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 track “Murder on the Dancefloor” has hit the Billboard Top 100 since it was featured in Saltburn’s final scene, in which Keoghan, 31, dances naked around the Saltburn mansion as the song plays.
Ahead of the film’s release, Ellis-Bextor had some heads-up about how her song would be used.
“A little while back I was asked for approval for having ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ featured in a film,” she told NME. “I was told very little information apart from the key components, like: Emerald Fennell was the writer/director (and I was already familiar with her and thought she was great), that the film was called Saltburn and that the main character would dance to the whole of the song with nothing on!”
When attending a screening of the movie, Ellis-Bextor was concerned for her teenage son, Sonny. (She shares Sonny, 19, with husband Richard Jones.)
“I just kept thinking, ‘I hope he’s OK!’” she recalled, adding that her mom was also in attendance at the screening. “There were definitely a few moments where I had my head in my hands thinking, ‘This is quite a lot!’ But [Sonny] was completely fine and dealt with it very calmly.”
Aside from Keoghan’s naked dance break, Saltburn has a few other jaw-dropping moments. At one point, Elordi’s Felix masturbates while taking a bath, and Keoghan’s Oliver drinks the remaining water. When it came to stripping down for the role, Keoghan had no qualms about baring it all.
“The initial thing was about me having no clothes on. I’m a bit, ‘Ehhh,’” he told Entertainment Weekly in November 2023. “But after take one, I was ready to go. I was like, ‘Let’s go again. Let’s go again.’ You kind of forget, because there’s such a comfortable environment created, and it gives you that license to go, ‘Alright, this is about the story now.’”
