Margot Robbie Jacob Elordi the Cast of Wuthering Heights on Love That Destroys Everything

Heathcliff, you're not enough. Not for her. Hello everyone, I'm Nikki Novak, and welcome to Fandango's Big Ticket interview with the cast, the director, the writer, the producer of Wuthering Heights. Hello! Hello! Okay, I think I'm the only person in this whole world that has not seen the film, but to borrow a phrase from one of the songs attached to the film, I've watched the trailer again and again and again and again and again. Emerald, your vision I cannot wait to see for this. I know this story is so near and dear to your heart, so what was your initial approach? Did it really start with sideburns, and how did you approach this film? It did kind of start with sideburns. So Jacob was playing Felix in Saltburn, and obviously in the mid-noughties, the sideburn was quite a big moment. And when I first saw him in the haircut, I realised he looked exactly like the Heathcliff on my sort of very, very well-worn copy of Wuthering Heights that I'd had since I was a teenager. And I've always wanted to adapt this book. I think the thing is, is that it's just, when I first read it, it just destroyed me. But it didn't just destroy me because it's beautiful and it's sad. It's a very destabilising work of art. It's a very complicated thing, because what Emily Bronte asks all of us to do is love to, in fact, not just to, a whole ream of incredibly difficult and unlovable characters. That's why people have read it for 200 years, and there's nothing more interesting to me than, you know, making everyone fall in love with people who maybe aren't traditionally lovable. And you talk about how, you know, you loved the story and you loved the book and it destroyed you. So how much is this film going to destroy us from the cast who has seen it? Yeah. I mean, one of the first things Emerald said to me was, you know, when we spoke very early on, she said, kind of, what's your dream for the project? She said, I want people to cry so hard they vomit. As a producer, what kind of conversations did the two of you have about creating the story for 2026? Well, Emerald, the genius that she is, gave us a heads up that she was writing this, I think, while we're still doing Saltburn. And there is no question of like, oh, you just know it's going to be brilliant. Emerald, unlike most people, gives you a fully formed, completely ready to go script when she gives you a script. It's like, all you have to do as a producer is, you know, go and start prepping, really. But she's pretty definitive with casting. Everyone she wanted is sitting here right now. Except, I guess I put myself in the way a little bit more. It's a dreadful day when Margot Robbie, the greatest actress in the world, most beautiful woman in the world, forces herself upon you, no matter that she did. How dare you sit here, Margot? It's just appalling. No, but I do feel very lucky. It was very much something that we spoke about earlier on. There's been a lot of interpretations of Wuthering Heights. There's been so many movies and TV series and stuff made. But I think the point of difference here is this is Emerald making you feel the way the book made her feel when she read it when she was younger. I hadn't read the book before reading the script. The script for me was the thing that gave me that gut-wrenching devastation and love. It's a gothic romance. It's intense and romantic and epic, and it will destroy you. But the book, Emily Bronte seems to pick the things she wants you to focus on, and she kind of dials down the volume on plot points that might seem important to someone else. I feel better now because I've been rereading the book, and I've had to go to the YouTube explanation of everything that's happening. Somehow it was easier in high school when I read this. Also, Joseph, if you don't read it with the accent in your head, it's really hard to understand what he's even saying. For everyone who's read the book, Joseph is a very elderly, very religious, very incomprehensible character, and in the movie he's portrayed by gorgeous genius Ewan Mitchell, and he's very easy to understand. And he's a heartbreaking character. He's a heartbreaking, brilliant character. In the movie, Emerald will make your heart break for Joseph, and in the book you're just like, oh, Joseph! Can you explain the quotations around the title? You've sort of explained it a little bit, but why was that decision made? I think it's a lot of things, but I think that primarily because the book means so much to me, and it means so, so much to so many people. I think doing a lot of talking to the Bronte Parsonage Museum and to other people who love this book too, because it means a lot to me. It's very important that everyone who loves it as much as I do feels almost a part of it, I guess. But the thing for me is that you can't adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book. 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, and also a version that I think that, look, there's a version that I remembered reading that isn't quite real. And there's a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened, and so it is Wuthering Heights and it isn't. But really, I'd say that any adaptation of a novel, especially a novel like this, should have, you know, Quidditch, Marksman. Talk about things that you want to have happen. There's something about a love between two characters that can't be, that is exceptionally painful. And as an audience member, you almost wish, like when you see a film again and again, that the ending is going to change the next time. And for the two of you, I'm just wondering, when you're on set, obviously people are going to ask you about creating chemistry, but I think it happens in the moment. I think you create it with your director and in the environment. But when you looked at each other in character, what sort of things came up for you? Because this is more than a love story. It's the intensity. It destroys them. It destroys people around them. I mean, I suppose you just want to honour that hopelessness and you have to always believe in the possibility of their love. I'm not sure. There was a few moments looking at each other in character, particularly on the moors. I'm not sure if this answers your question, but there were these kind of explosive moments when we would be standing alone, sort of waiting for a scene or walking to a set up. Because on the moors, we shot quite sporadically. There would be a great cliff over there and then Emma would be like, run, let's go, we need to shoot there. The sun looks amazing. And then we'd all sprint over there and there'd be a moment where we'd be running hand in hand through the moors. Maybe not even in the scene, just setting it up, where I'd look across at her and she'd be looking at me. And you really realised you were looking at Catherine and she was looking at Heathcliff. And in that moment, we really were a part of their love, for real. There were a few moments like that, I think. What's the song? Oh, the Kate Bush song we'd be playing, which you can't avoid. But we'd play it on the moors in sort of a small moment alone. And it was this really sort of profound thing, watching the sunset and being Heathcliff and Cathy and looking. Heathcliff and Cathy. And sitting and watching the sunset on the moors as the sort of spirit of their characters have for the last 200 years. And you can almost imagine that the spirit of this love that Bronson created is sort of floating around there. And it really did feel like we were catching little pieces of that unrequited love. And the moments when it was good and the love was alive were really sort of pleasurable moments. To actually see them, because in the book you don't see them together, but to actually confirm that love in our version of the narrative and to see it lived through was a pretty profound experience. The two of you, do you think that kind of love in life is sustainable? Or do you think it's always going to sort of explode? I mean, not their kind of love, but like you mentioned earlier, it destroys them and everyone around them. It's like all the key players in this movie that are so affected by Cathy and Heathcliff's love and it's part of the tragedy. I mean, everything Jacob said is so true. And I felt that. And I also, I think I just, I get so dependent on people when I work. Like, I'm so dependent with people I work with and I love everyone so much. And I'm always that person who's so devastated when a job's over and I never want it to end and I'm going to miss everyone so much. And even seeing everyone today is so exciting. And I think I developed that quite quickly with Jacob too. I don't know if Emerald told you to do this or you did this, but I remember the first couple of days on set, he would just be like, like always in the vicinity where I was, but like in a corner, like watching Cathy. I didn't tell him to do that. I actually had to ask him to leave. I was like, oh, he's right there. And then like an hour later, I'm like, oh, he's over there. Like he's there. And then on the third day, I remember I found myself starting to look around to see where I was like, well, he's obviously going to be somewhere close by. Where is he right now? Because he's not in a corner of a room watching me right now. And then he wasn't and I was really unnerved and unmoored and I felt like quite lost, like a kid without their like blanket or something. I was like, where is he? And I asked AD, I was like, so Jacob, where is Jacob right now? And they're like, he's just doing a costume change. It's not a big deal. But I found myself so dependent, like codependent kind of. And I don't know if that's like a thing that I'm trying to get into Cathy mode or that's just how I am as an actor. I don't know. But we do so many of our scenes together. If we're not together in a scene, we're talking about each other or thinking about each other. It becomes very focused on each other in every single thing that they do, which is actually also a really nice kind of straightforward thing to do in a movie. As opposed to trying to play the subtext for a lot of plot points and this or a character who's got very vague ambitions. It's kind of like, or if I knew that I was thinking about Heathcliff, I was doing my job in every scene. I don't know if that sounds simplistic, but that's kind of what it was. It's very profound, actually, because that is really the core of it, isn't it? It's the action of doing, as opposed to thinking about it. Yeah, so Emeril didn't tell you to just watch it. We have a mutual obsession. I think the thing is, if you, regardless of plot or screenplay, if you have the opportunity to share a film set with Margot Robbie, you're going to make sure you're within five to ten metres at all times, watching how she drinks tea, how she eats her food, how she does it, when is it going to slip, when is the thing going to come undone, and it never comes undone. She's just like an elite actor, and she's producing the movie. So I don't know how somebody has the skill and the wisdom to do that as a performer and to give the performance that she gave, but I was enamoured by her, and I still am. Oh, I love you, by the way, Margot. Okay, so I want to go to Shahzad and Alison. The two of your characters are caught in the crosshairs for the majority of this, so how did you, as an actor and as a performer, approach that? What did that bring up for each of you? Because, like Emeril said, there's so much complexity to the story. There's probably jealousy, there's rage, there's maybe some empathy. I don't know, but for the two of you, what did you experience? I think it's quite hard when you're playing the ultimate cuck man. But I think that's what we spoke about a lot, which is different from the book a lot, is that Edgar, we tried to make him a credible threat, and so that's more of an interesting thing to play, and the love triangle or square or parallelogram, whatever it is, only works if you invest in those things, and then you buy it more, and it makes it all the more heartbreaking. So what's my function? How do I serve the director? I try and buy into that as much as possible, and I think that was the beautiful thing, and then Emeril makes it a fun set and a playful set, and we try and find those moments. But yeah, if I play the cuck right, then it's ultimately more heartbreaking. So yeah, and that's the beauty of it, I think. And then to have an amazing partner like you, it's all the more easier. Touché. What I loved about Isabella in this is, sometimes the character is spoken about as Heathcliff's wife or Edgar's sister, whereas I found how she was drawn in this was such a particular type of person, that she was so defined before Heathcliff arrived and her relationship. When Cathy comes, it's the best thing in the world. She's desperate for a best friend. She's desperate for a doll as well to dress up, and so everything is heaven for her until her best friend tells her that the person she thinks she's destined to be with, she can't have. So they were so much fun to play when we were doing all of those moments where they were sort of going head to head with each other. And then even with Heathcliff, she's so underestimated as a character by them, and I think it's sort of like what you were saying earlier, so much of playing those scenes with that tension, there was so much that you could do with it, because love in that sense sort of is a game as well, and I think even for Isabella, a lot of it became about winning as well. But yeah, it was fun. I love being underestimated personally. Hong? I love being underestimated. Hong, I wanted to ask you about playing Nellie. Is she a neutral narrator? Is she a narrator, and is she able to be neutral, or what can you tease about what kind of Nellie we're going to get? I don't think Nellie is neutral. I'd be interested to see how audiences do interpret her, because I think at the very least she may be guilty of accidental cruelty, but I don't ever feel the need to judge a character or defend a character, so for me, even though this story takes place in 1800s England, I felt culturally very close to it. I understood it. I understood everyone's motivations. My grandmother and my mother did not really have a say in who they ended up marrying, and I understand the circumstances around that and how people feel, and so there's a picture of my mother, similar to Kathy, where she is looking gorgeous in a wedding dress and a veil, but so sad. And so I completely understood this world, and I understood why Nellie did what she did, but I don't know whether she's friend or foe. That will be up to the audience to decide. Favourite romantic film of all time, besides Wuthering Heights, of course. Bright Star, In the Mood for Love, Candy, those three maybe. Candy. Candy, there's something about it, yeah. I love Terms of Endearment and Moonstruck so much. Random Harvest. Something's coming to mind, but it's not. I don't know if it's a romance movie, but I find it really romantic. You know, Lovers on the Bridge. Oh, yeah. Have you seen it? It's amazing. What a cool answer to give right now. I was about to say Titanic, and now I'm like, oh, I guess I shouldn't. I heard this was going to be the new generation's Titanic. I hope so. I really hope so. I love The Remains of the Day. That kills me. And I love Titanic, and I love The Notebook. And I'll end on you. Ten Things I Hate About You. Oh, great. Thanks, guys. A wonderful adaptation. That's my favorite line. And I cannot wait to see your wonderful adaptation. Thank you all. I hope you love it. Thank you very much. It was really lovely to chat with you all. If you're going mad and you cannot wait to see this movie, tickets are on sale now at Fandango. Thanks for watching.