The last time writer-director Emerald Fennell released a movie, 2020’s Promising Young Woman, it was the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film premiered in person at Sundance earlier that year, but she missed out on any other opportunities to experience the project in a proper theater. With her follow-up film, Saltburn, now in theaters, she’s not missing out. “Every conversation is different; every room is different—that’s what’s been so exciting,” Fennell tells Little Gold Men. “In some rooms, it’s like total pin-drop silence. In other rooms, it’s super rowdy.”

A guide to Hollywood’s biggest races

It’s no surprise that the reactions have varied. As with Promising Young Woman, Fennell is pushing her audiences into an uncomfortable space with her follow-up, a visceral, sex-drenched exploration of wealth and privilege set at a picturesque English manor. Saltburn stars Barry Keoghan as Oliver, an Oxford student who finds himself obsessed with his well-off and popular classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi). When Felix invites Oliver to his fancy estate for the summer, Oliver becomes entwined with a complicated cast of characters played by Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe, and Carey Mulligan.

An unexpected result of the film? Despite the movie’s dark and twisted turns, Fennell says she’s gotten a lot of “anecdotal evidence of quite a lot of sexy behavior that happens after people watch the movie.” Fennell, who won the original-screenplay Oscar for Promising Young Woman, spoke to Little Gold Men about her clandestine writing process, how she casts her lead roles, and what story she plans to tell next.

Vanity Fair: After Promising Young Woman was such a success, I assume there were lots of different opportunities that were coming your way. How did you decide that Saltburn would be next for you?

Emerald Fennell: It was an extraordinary time. I was getting lots of incredible offers, just unbelievable things with people I’ve wanted to work with my whole life. So many things that could have been just so fun and amazing. But what I realized about myself is that I can only do one thing at a time, and I can only do it in secret. I don’t even show my husband. I don’t show anyone until something’s completely finished. And so I said quite early on to my lovely managers and agents [about the offers], “Don’t tell me, don’t show me, because it’s too tempting.” It’s not at all that I’m turning my back in a sort of haughty way—it’s more that I know that there are things I just couldn’t bear to turn down.

I realized, especially when you’ve got young kids, you can only do so much and you need to choose the thing that you want to do next. And I’ve been thinking about Saltburn for years and years. It was always the next thing I wanted to make.

How did this process of writing Saltburn differ from Promising Young Woman for you?

With Promising Young Woman, wonderful Lucky Chap [Margot Robbie’s production company] had optioned it from the idea, so they knew what it was going to be about, more or less. With this one, nobody knew anything about it until I gave in the completed script. I’ve learned over time, the more people are allowed in there, the less real it becomes to me and the less detailed—and also, in some sort of perverse way, I sort of lose interest. It has to feel private for it to be really honest, especially if you’re talking about the sorts of things I like to talk about: self-delusion and lying and the sort of things we fantasize about kind of secretly.

So my writing process, just over the course of years—I just sit and think and daydream and I visit worlds. And these worlds just become more and more fixed, and then the conversations that happen there become more and more fixed, and then I write it down when I know it’s finished. I try as much as possible not to redraft or to only redraft at a certain point, after I’ve met all the actors and we’ve had a rehearsal and they’ve said things that really sparked and are exciting.

Who reads your script first when it is finally on paper?

My husband [producer Chris Vernon], who is really, really wonderful and the perfect kind of combination of honest and encouraging. My mother, who’s a brilliant writer and completely unshockable. I know that if I shock my mother, I’ve gone too far.

When it comes to casting the roles, do you do formal auditions? Is it just more of a conversation?

It’s a combination of things, but I like to meet people, especially for the bigger roles. I will always want to just meet people first and have a coffee because I just want to know, really. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it is a chemistry thing. We have to start looking at very complicated things very early on, so I need to kind of know that people are open to that—whether they’re honest, I suppose. Or as honest as any of us can be, or even if they’re honest about lying. So a lot of my questions will be things like, “Do you like being famous?” It doesn’t matter how people answer, it’s just looking at: Are we going to be able to get into this honestly?

The film is set in 2006, and the pop-culture references are so good. What’s the pop-culture reference you’re the most proud of that’s in there?

I think the Livestrong bracelet that Felix wears. It’s the sort of boy who was wearing them at the time. But all of it—for example, the Blackberry ringtone. God Almighty! I mean, that gave me proper shivers when I heard it.

What’s so great about it is, when you’re dealing with beauty, when you’re talking about surface versus the kind of sticky underbelly and you’re talking about beauty and what beauty does to us all, it kind of drives us all insane. In order to humanize it, everyone looks a little bit lame because the recent past is a little bit lame. I mean, Felix’s “Carpe Diem” tattoo just knocks a couple of gorgeous points off, naturally. It’s like if the most beautiful person in the world screeches up to your front door, but they’ve got a personalized number plate that says, like, “Legend.” It’s like, what are you willing to overlook?

With Saltburn out now, is what’s next already clear to you?

Yes, it’s clear to me. Do you know what it’s like? It’s like having a new boyfriend or falling in love. When I don’t write, I get very anxious and I start to feel a bit mad. Since I delivered Saltburn, I can feel myself being pulled already away. I love Saltburn so, so deeply and I’m so excited talking about it, but there’s part of my brain that’s like when you just want to go and make out with your new boyfriend.