What Emerald Fennell Has To Say About The "Wuthering Heights" Scandal.
Emily Brontë's and Emerald Fennell's souls are different, regardless of what Wuthering Heights' soul is composed of. After receiving a lot of criticism for the film, the director and writer of the new adaptation, which stars Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Catherine, has tried to explain how she developed the well-loved classic. For this reason, she used quotation marks to formally refer to her film as "Wuthering Heights."
“You can’t adapt a book as difficult and complicated and difficult as this book,” in an earlier conversation with Fandango, Emerald clarified. “I can’t say I’m making Wuthering Heights. It’s not possible. What I can say is I’m making a version of it.”
Indeed, Emerald had made it clear that she was not trying to create a true adaptation, even as many audience members who are familiar with the book continue to point out the differences—such as altering the ending, limiting the Isabella Linton character, and creating Cathy's literal "skin room" from images of Margot's real skin.
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“There was a version I remembered reading that isn’t quite real,” she clarified. “And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so, it’s Wuthering Heights and it isn’t.”
Emerald claimed to have "always wanted to adapt" the book, but it wasn't until she collaborated with Jacob on Saltburn in 2024 that she was inspired to do so.
“Jacob was playing Felix in Saltburn and obviously in the mid noughties, the sideburn was quite a big moment,” Emerald remembers, “and when I first saw him in the haircut, I realized he looked exactly like the Heathcliff on my well, well-worn copy of Wuthering Heights that I’ve had since I was a teenager.”
However, other academics contend that Emily originally portrayed Heathcliff, who is described in the text as "dark skinned," as Black, which has led detractors to completely reject Jacob's casting.
“I think the thing is everyone who loves this book has such a personal connection to it, and so you can only ever make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it,” when questioned about her decision to cast Jacob, Emerald stated to The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t know, I think I was focusing on the pseudo-masochistic elements of it.”
Margot, who produced the movie as well, always thought the movie was completely different from the book.
“I hadn’t read the book before reading the script,” as the movie continued, Margot informed Fandango, “This is Emerald making you feel the way the book made her feel when she read it when she was younger.”
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