Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation is very, very badly cast, and here’s why.

I think everyone is on the same page—which is to say, angry. The internet is angry, my friends are angry, and I am angry, and here’s why (though if you are reading this website, you probably already know this news): Emerald Fennell, the writer-director of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, is adapting Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, and it has been announced that the two impassioned, absolutely unhinged leads Cathy and Heathcliff will be played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

Yes! Yes. Obviously, there’s there’s a lot to unpack here!

First of all, Margot Robbie is a very good actress, but I personally don’t buy her as the very young, self-directed, ghostly-tortured Cathy. We need a young, pale weirdo to play Cathy. End of story.

Second of all, Fennell does not seem to be the right director for this project. Now, the few dissenters might say, “but what do you mean? Fennell is the least subtle filmmaker out there, and Wuthering Heights is the least subtle book out there, so shouldn’t it be a good match?” No! The answer is no!

Ah, but the lack of subtlety in Wuthering Heights is highly calibrated and effective; it acts as an enveloping thematic device to corral the wild, almost fauvistic, and borderline psychopathic urges of its characters with the abstractness of their yearning and connection, and the ethereality of their later existences. Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece of stark contrasts and impulsive movements.

Contrarily, as evidenced by her last two films, Fennell’s directorial forgoes subtlety without swapping it for any richer devices to augment the reading. Her films are sparse in subtext and therefore in their interpretive potential; she seems to point directly to things not to map out a complicated web of behaviors or feelings, but to explain things to an audience she seems fears will not understand what she is trying to say. This makes various elements in both of these films both highly redundant and reductive.

Thirdly, and many on Twitter have said this, including Joyce Carol Oates, but Robbie and Elordi don’t promise to capture the absolutely deranged, fully batshit essences of both Cathy and Heathcliff. Wuthering Heights is more than a story of yearning, it’s a story about madness and manipulation and an absolutely twisted, messed-up love with racism-related abuse and trauma baked into it. As my friend Emily said in our long, very pissed off text chain, you need two unknown actors or a pair of well-known weirdo actors. I fully agree with this tweet from @timewrinkles.

no hate to margot robbie and jacob elordi but neither of them have enough Psychologically Tortured vibes to play cathy and heathcliff. like a wuthering heights adaptation simply needs actors who are weirder

— 🔪 (@timewrinkles) September 23, 2024

Here’s what Joyce Carol Oates had to say, just for the record.

this Heathcliff isn’t looking like he’s been prowling o’er the moors for quite a few generations. https://t.co/eYnQmjg5ee

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) September 24, 2024

Fourthly, and this is the big one, why are we, in the year of our lord 2024, casting Heathcliff with a white actor???? Heathcliff is explicitly nonwhite, described as having “gipsy” (Romani) origins! When he is a child, he is described as a “gipsy brat,” “as dark almost as if it came from the devil.” It’s unclear if he is actually, technically of Romani ancestry or if “gipsy” is a catchall term for a Black or Brown identity. But he is not white!!! He’s referred to as a “gipsy” six times in the novel! The first time we get a description of him, at the very start of the novel, he is described in the following terms.

But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose.

See, Heathcliff is a foundling, discovered homeless and sickly baby by Cathy Earnshaw’s father. He’s taken in and included in the Earnshaw family, named “Heathcliff” after the Earnshaw’s deceased firstborn son. But when Cathy’s father dies and her racist, jealous brother Hindley becomes head of the household, Hindley rejects Heathcliff, as a brother and as a man entirely. He calls him “imp of Satan,” a “beggarly interloper” trying to “wheedle [his] father out of all he has,” and forces him to become a ploughboy on their estate.

The point of Wuthering Heights is that Heathcliff is ultimately cast out from the Earnshaw family and demoted to the rank of servant because he is nonwhite and low-class. He isn’t just some brooding, earthy moor-man; he’s a nonwhite person in an exclusively white environment, subjected to racist and demeaning treatment… and this fuels the very, very complicated dynamics between Cathy and Heathcliff. There can’t be a love story without the story of Heathcliff’s “otherness.”

This tweet, from @ceokimjisoos, is absolutely correct about who could be cast and do a great job.

it is not too late to yeet margot and jacob out of wuthering heights and cast #REAL talent as cathy and heathcliff! pic.twitter.com/9jYaETMNl4

— n (@ceokimjisoos) September 23, 2024

Honestly, though, in our current era of Bridgerton and My Lady Jane and inclusive casting practices that allow the reimagining of history to include BIPOC characters in traditionally white roles, why are we erasing actual representations and discussions from historical texts that communicate how race was handled , in those historical contexts? We can’t make up a better-looking history to replace our real one with, in the popular imagination!!!!

Finally, anyone who wants to watch this movie should go see Andrea Arnold’s extraordinary 2011 version. It features a Black actor, James Howson, as Heathcliff. Now that’s a movie that has actually READ its source material.