Emerald Fennell is teasing her film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which garnered significant attention following the release of the trailer.
The filmmaker addressed why she cast Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the lead roles and why she decided to adapt the classic book.
“I wanted to make something that made me feel like I felt when I first read it, which means that it’s an emotional response to something. It’s, like, primal, sexual,” she said, according to the BBC.
In directing the adaptation, Fennell said she “wanted to make something that was the book that I experienced when I was 14.”
“I’ve been obsessed. I’ve been driven mad by this book,” she said. “And of course now I’m even madder than I was before because I’ve thought of little else now for two years.”
The trailer received a lot of attention due to the heavily erotic scenes, saying, “There’s an enormous amount of sadomasochism in this book. There’s a reason people were deeply shocked by it [when it was published].”
“It’s been a kind of masochistic exercise working on it because I love it so much, and it can’t love me back, and I have to live with that. So it’s been troubling, but I think in a really useful way,” she added.
Fennell acknowledged that it was a “huge responsibility” adapting the book, adding, “I know that if somebody else made it, I’d be furious. It’s very personal material for everyone. It’s very illicit. The way we relate to the characters is very private, I think.”
The director also received pushback for casting the Barbie star and Saltburn star in the leading roles, as they don’t reflect the characters described in the book. Catherine Earnshaw was a teenager in the book, while Heathcliff is described by the author as being “dark-skinned.”
Fennell said that she asked Elordi to play the role on the set of Saltburn as he “looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read”.
“And it was so awful because I so wanted to scream. Not the professional thing to do, obviously,” she said. “I had been thinking about making [Wuthering Heights], and it seemed to me he had the thing… he’s a very surprising actor.”
On casting Robbie, Fennell said she is “not like anyone I’ve ever met – ever – and I think that’s what I felt like with Cathy,” adding that she is “so beautiful and interesting and surprising, and she is the type of person who, like Cathy, could get away with anything.”
“I think honestly she could commit a killing spree and nobody would mind. And that is who Cathy is to me. Cathy is somebody who just pushes to see how far she can go,” Fennell continued. “So it needed somebody like Margot, who’s a star, not just an incredible actress — which she is — but somebody who has a power, an otherworldly power, a Godlike power, that means people lose their minds.”
Wuthering Heights opens in theaters on February 14, 2026.
The post Emerald Fennell On ‘Wuthering Heights’ Being “Primal” & “Sexual” & Addresses Criticism For Casting Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi appeared first on Deadline.
