Issue #54: What Saltburn's Emerald Fennell taught me about being an outsider

'Don't we all feel like outsiders? Don't you?' questions the Oscar-winning director.

Maybe it was the weather that did it. That non-committal sideways drizzle that hardly warrants an umbrella; the chill you can never quite dress correctly for; the hopeless grey-on-grey London aesthetic that makes you wonder whether this city really is as ‘overrated’ as people say. Or maybe it was just my internal weather, the sensation of having woken up on the wrong side of my too-big bed, that made me feel this way – but, staring from the exterior through the glass front of Dame Alice Owens pub on Saint John Street yesterday, I felt the pang of being an outsider.

Inside, beneath the amber glow of pendant lights, was a group of friends crammed around a table for post-work drinks. A woman in a candy-coloured knitted jumper, pouring from a bottle of red; a couple in matching grey beanies; a new arrival draping his Barbour coat over the back of a wooden chair. I found myself staring a beat too long, wishing I was among them, my evening of yoga followed by microwaved Sainsbury’s lasagne suddenly rendered a gloomy prospect.

And yet, I was once like them… and when I write that, I’m not referring to a long time ago. I was literally doing the same thing – having a drink with a friend at a local pub – the previous evening. How is it that, passing by this convivial scene, the ‘lone outsider’ identity was one I so easily slipped into, when I’d been on the other side of the glass, just one day before?

It made me think of last week, when I interviewed Emerald Fennell, the Oscar-winning director of Promising Young Woman and the upcoming Saltburn, which comes out this Friday.