Jacob Elordi knew Wuthering Heights would elicit a reaction among fans — and according to the actor, that’s a good thing.
“I think what [director Emerald Fennell] has done is really perfect and super beautiful,” Elordi, 28, shared in a Tuesday, September 30, interview with WSJ. Magazine. “It’s electric. And it’s also like nails on a chalkboard. It does something. It moves you in some kind of way, good or bad, but it will move you.”
Elordi stars as Heathcliff in Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel, a scorned lover who seeks revenge on foster sister Catherine (Margot Robbie) after she ends their affair and marries someone else. Eloridi’s involvement in the project has been a topic of conversation among scholars and fans of the literature since it was announced last year, as Heathcliff is referred to in the text as a “dark-skinned gypsy” with “black eyes.” The description has led many to believe the character was written to be a person of color.
Elordi and Robbie’s ages have also been called into question — Elordi is 28, while Robbie is 37 — with the novel depicting both Heathcliff and Catherine as no older than teenagers by the story’s end.
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Some fans have also brought up the erotic nature of Fennell’s Wuthering Heights trailer, released last month, and the decision for Elordi’s Heathcliff to sport a gold tooth and muttonchops in the film. When asked about those stylistic choices for Heathcliff, Elordi told WSJ., “I mean, he has them.”
Fennell herself recently defended her casting and aesthetic choices while appearing on a panel at Brontë Women’s Writing Festival in England earlier this month. There, she explained that upon meeting Elordi amid filming for 2023’s Saltburn she felt the actor “looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff in 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 added, “I had been thinking about making [Wuthering Heights], and it seemed to me he had the thing. He’s a very surprising actor.”
As for the sexual tone of the film’s first teaser, Fennell pushed back on the idea that Wuthering Heights isn’t erotic, claiming that there is an “enormous amount of sadomasochism in this book. There’s a reason people were deeply shocked by it [when it was published].”
Jacob Elordi. Warner Bros. Pictures
She also promised that while she did take liberties in the story, she also stayed true to as much of Brontë’s dialogue as possible. “I was really determined to preserve as much of her dialogue [as possible] because her dialogue is the best dialogue ever,” she said. “I couldn’t better it, and who could?”
While Elordi’s full Healthcliff reveal won’t be hitting theaters until 2026, he’ll transform entirely in December for Guiellermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. To prepare for the role of the titular monster, Elordi crafted a scrapbook in which he wrote with his non-dominant hand so that the penmanship would look unfamiliar.
“If someone got murdered in my vicinity and they picked this book up, they’d probably just put me in jail,” he joked to WSJ. “Just in case.”
Elordi told the outlet he also focused on mimicking the facial movements of his golden retriever, Layla, in order to bring the uncanny character to life.
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“I was copying what her lips were doing and her face was doing, and then her nose touched my nose, and it went, Bzzzt!” he recalled of one study session. “It completely carried me through into the movie.”
As both Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein are two of this year’s most anticipated films — and adaptations of beloved novels — Elordi shared that he’s learned to turn out the noise by sticking to what matters: acting.
“I literally just go to my premieres,” he explained, noting that his inner circle is not into the idea of fame and celebrity. “I don’t really acknowledge attention. My reality is in the start of production and the end of production, and then I go home.”
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