'Saltburn' star Barry Keoghan says everyone was silent after he improvised the graveyard scene: 'No one spoke for a bit'

Barry Keoghan, who plays Oliver Quick in "Saltburn," spoke to Esquire about the film crew's reaction to his performance in the graveyard scene.

• Barry Keoghan told Esquire that the "Saltburn" crew was silent after he filmed the graveyard scene.
• "I think no one spoke for a bit," he said. 
• The scene was partly unscripted and filmed with limited crew members. 

"Saltburn" star Barry Keoghan's shocking improvised graveyard scene left the crew speechless on set.

"I think no one spoke for a bit," Keoghan said in the latest installment of Esquire's "Explain This" video series. "You know, I had mud all over me as well. There's a lot of crazy things I'd done for that movie."

Emerald Fennell's "Saltburn" centers on Oliver Quick (Keoghan), a student who arrives at Oxford University on a scholarship and struggles to fit in with his upper-class peers. He quickly befriends wealthy and likable student Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites Oliver to spend the summer at Saltburn, his family's grand estate.

As Oliver gets to know Felix better, he becomes unnervingly obsessed with him. This results in a jaw-dropping bathtub scene and, later, a moment in which Oliver strips and thrusts into the soil of Felix's grave after he dies.

Keoghan and Fennell, who wrote and directed "Saltburn," have both opened up about the graveyard scene in various interviews since the movie's theatrical release in November.

Oliver was always meant to get a bit too close to the grave, but Fennell adjusted the scene after talking to Keoghan before filming, Entertainment Weekly reported.

"I spoke to Barry in the morning, and I just said, 'I don't know, Barry. I think that he would...unzip,'" Fennell told EW. "And Barry just said, 'Yup.'"

At the film's LA premiere, Keoghan told Variety that Oliver's disturbingly intimate response was indeed the result of him and Fennell collaborating.

To film the scene, a limited amount of crew members were present.

"On the day, I was like, 'Can I try something?' I wanted to see what the next level of obsession was. So I asked for a closed set," he said. "I wanted to see where it went. It could have gone completely wrong but I think it moved the story."

Keoghan shared similar comments during additional interviews with Variety and GQ. More recently, Keoghan unpacked the unscripted scene while speaking to Deadline at the Golden Globes.

"I just wanted the camera to roll," he said. "Not to kind of preempt it or rehearse it and what happened, happened. It was one take, and I think it was right."