Wuthering Heights: Hollywood’s worst casting decisions

The news that Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi would star in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of an Emily Bronte romance novel made waves, but in an age of increasingly strict casting, it’s not a surprise.

Catherine is a teenage girl living on a farm in England in the late 1700s. Heathcliff is a dark-skinned orphan of the same age. They are the heroine and hero of Emily Bronte’s novels. Wuthering HeightsSince the novel was published in 1847, countless readers have imagined their love story, but Margot RobbieBarbie) and Jacob Elordi (Elvis Presley PriscillaStill, Emerald Fennell is not like us. Saltburn is adapting Wuthering Heights for film, and announced earlier this week that Catherine and Heathcliff will be played by two incredibly handsome Australians, aged 34 and 27.

Reaction online has not been entirely positive. Bronte fans on social media have called the casting “disappointing,” “terrible,” and “weird,” while Independent film critic Clarice Lafree wrote: asked: “Did anyone actually read the book before deciding this?”

To be fair, we don’t know what Fennell has planned; perhaps her adaptation will be a flashy, irreverent update, complete with a disco soundtrack and a nude dance routine on the windswept Yorkshire moors. But there’s no denying that, at first glance, the casting seems fundamentally, terribly wrong. It has a startling, what-were-they-thinking quality that recalls Hollywood satires where sleazy producers bellow, ” Wuthering Heights is a bit boring. Let’s get Barbie and Elvis for Cathy and Heathcliff!”

The inappropriateness comes down to a few factors that separate intriguing, divisive casting from casting that infuriates internet citizens. One of those factors is the disparity in age between the characters and the actors. When 45-year-old Kevin Spacey was cast as singer Bobby Darin, who died at 37, in Beyond the Sea, San Francisco Theatre’s Mick La Salle said, Called it “One of the most embarrassing scenes of 2004.” The fact that Spacey directed, co-wrote and co-produced the film made it even more embarrassing.

In the case of Wuthering Heights, one could argue that Fennell was simply following Hollywood tradition. Laurence Olivier was in his 30s when he played Heathcliff in the 1939 film adaptation of the classic novel. But we are now more critical of age-inappropriate casting than we used to be. With Wikipedia at our fingertips, it’s easy to see when a star is taking work from a younger actor or an older one, and it’s hard to miss it. The world wondered why Oliver Stone cast Angelina Jolie (born 1975) and Colin Farrell (born 1976) as mother and son in Alexander (2004).

We’ve also become more sensitive to issues of authenticity and representation, especially with regard to race. Speaking of Olivier, his darkening make-up to play Othello in the 1965 film of Shakespeare’s tragedy would be as unacceptable today as Mickey Rooney’s racist performance as Holly Golightly’s Japanese neighbor in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), or John Wayne’s portrayal of Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956). The whitening of some of the characters in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender (2010), for example, wasn’t the worst thing, but it reinforced the impression that the film got almost everything wrong.

The problem with Wuthering Heights is that Heathcliff’s black skin is referenced so many times in the novel that it seems absurd to ignore it in the new film: Given that Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights featured a black Heathcliff (James Howson), Fennell’s choice can’t help but feel like a leap in the wrong direction.

A more glaring problem is that both Robbie and Elordi seem far too flashy and glamorous for their roles; they’re suited to the red carpet, not a muddy field. One aspect of this is that they have what’s known as “iPhone face” or “smartphone face,” a term used in period dramas for actors who look unbelievably modern. With their pearly white teeth, flawless skin, lustrous hair and gym-honed physiques, it’s nearly impossible to believe they live in an era without stylists, nutritionists and personal trainers.

Think Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York, Keanu Reeves in Dracula, and Tom Cruise in The Great Gatsby. These three actors are only really comfortable in the swanky milieu of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They shouldn’t be playing characters who haven’t ridden high-performance motorbikes to the beaches of California. Robbie herself said: Mary Queen of Scots (2018) She played an aging and haggard Elizabeth I, jealous of the youthful beauty of her cousin Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan), and it required a great deal of suspension of disbelief.

Yet, the reason Robbie and Elordi starred in Wuthering Heights is precisely because of their attractiveness. If two actors have the popularity and sex appeal, the prospect of seeing them both in the same movie would theoretically be irresistible for audiences. Another little thing is that Robbie not only starred in Barbie, the highest-grossing movie of 2023, but also produced it, and she also produced Saltburn. If she wanted to star in Wuthering Heights, who would stop her? Tom Cruise is also not known for his enormous height, bulging muscles, or blonde hair, but he was an A-list producer on both Jack Reacher movies, so there was no way anyone would say no when he made the ridiculous decision to play Lee Child’s hulking vigilante.

The good news is that, whatever Robbie and Elordi are, they’re also fine actors. If anyone can pull off such questionable casting, it’s them. Finally, keep in mind that things can always get worse. In 1996, there was a musical of Wuthering Heights called Heathcliff, starring and co-written by Cliff Richard.

The show opened just after Richard’s 56th birthday.