Degrees of ‘Saltburn’: How the Gothic Thriller is Connected to ‘Barbie’

Although most of us are haunted by the bathtub and graveyard scenes from Emerald Fennell’s film Saltburn, there is another piece of information that is hard to shake: two people tie the gothic romance thriller to Barbie. 

Although Barbie narrator Helen Mirren didn’t want to talk about Midge in the top-grossing film of 2023, we’re about to talk about her now. Barbie’s pregnant friend is played by none other than Fennell. You may also recognize the director and actor from roles such as Camilla in The Crown and Nurse Patsy Mount in Call the Midwife. 

Fennell revealed to People why Barbie director Greta Gerwig selected her for the iconic role. “Because I’d been pregnant making Promising Young Woman, and then pregnant to accept an Oscar, it seemed as though I was some permanently pregnant woman,” she shared.

“I could see how unbelievably hilarious it was for me to then, having just stopped being pregnant, put on a pregnancy suit and be pregnant again…Because Midge has been pregnant for 50 years, God bless her! Poor f—ing thing.” 

While Midge’s neighbor Barbie asked, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” Margot Robbie was thinking of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor,” a highlight on the Saltburn soundtrack. The Barbie actress is one of four producers on Saltburn, which include Fennell, Tom Ackerley, and Josey McNamara. However, this isn’t Robbie’s first time funding a Fennell film. Robbie’s production company LuckyChap Entertainment produced Fennell’s 2020 Oscar-winning feature Promising Young Woman, a film about a woman seeking gruesome revenge for her friend’s rape. Things come full circle when you realize that Saltburn, Promising Young Woman, AND Barbie are all LuckyChap Entertainment productions. 

Despite these films being so closely related, they will never be quite as familiar as Barry Keoghan is with that bathtub drain.