Jacob Elordi hospitalized after second-degree burn from shower accident

Jacob Elordi is revealing how a brutal shower accident left him hospitalized with a second-degree burn.

During the filming of “Wuthering Heights,” the Oscar-nominated actor said he had to scrub off dirt and makeup on the set of the romance tragedy opposite Margot Robbie.

“The full story is that, when I was doing ‘Frankenstein,’ I had so much make-up in my fingers and in my feet all the time, and I left it on for the whole shoot because I couldn’t be bothered washing it all off,” he said in an Esquire interview published Jan. 30.

“As Heathcliff, I was covered in mange and dirt, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to do that again, I’m going to clean my feet properly every night and come in to work fresh the next day.’ So I went to clean my feet, and I leaned back and my back seared into the steam knob and I stood up screaming; it tore up my back,” he told director Emerald Fennell. “When I went to work on Monday, I had a second-degree burn.”

Fennell said she received a text from producer Josey McNamara that read, “Jacob’s in hospital” in the first week of filming “Wuthering Heights.”

“Obviously, I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s had a car accident,’ and then he was like, ‘He’s burnt his back in the shower.’ I was like, ‘You know what, Josey? Start with that,'” she said.

Elordi jokingly explained that make-up artist Siân Miller, who designed scars on Elordi’s back for the movie, had a daring challenge for the “Euphoria” star that he took too far.

“She challenged me: ‘If Daniel Day-Lewis was playing Heathcliff, he would have come in with scars.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m going to go away and maim myself on the weekend to prove to you that I’m Heathcliff!'”

That night, he sat on the floor of a steam shower at the house he was staying at with “a brass knob that steam came from out of the wall.”

Directed by Fennell, the film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel follows Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in a passionate and obsessive love story.

Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff prompted backlash because the character is described as “dark-skinned” in the book. Previous adaptations of “Wuthering Heights” have also cast white actors, including Tom Hardy and Ralph Fiennes, though a 2011 film cast a Black actor, James Howson, in the role.

Contributing: Anna Kaufman, USA TODAY