"There’s something absolutely magical about the moors"

The Manchester Evening News interviews Charlotte Riley about her upcoming appearance (August 30 and 31 in ITV1) as Cathy in Wuthering Heights 2009:

How did she feel about taking on such an iconic role?
“You pick up on different parts of the book. Certain things appeal to you and you remember certain elements of it and your interpretation of it is very different. So it’s very daunting. It’s like playing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. You have to just go with your instinct on it and know that you can’t please everyone.
“It’s an adaptation, it’s not the book verbatim, so you have to have confidence that you’re creating the story that the director and the writer want and that they are moving in a definite direction with it. You’re not trying necessarily to recreate the book.
“I loved the book. I read it three or four times and used it constantly as a reference, all the way through, for scenes and for preparation. A lot of the language that Peter Bowker kept in is quite florid – and it was always interesting being able to find those passages in the book.
“Sometimes it was totally unhelpful and you just had to leave the book behind and go with what you had right there. You’ve just got to believe that you’re hopefully going to bring something to the role that many people will like.
“I did watch a lot of the other adaptations. From my experience of the things I’ve watched, she’s either been American or French or very English, as opposed to northern. I felt that was relatively untapped.
“It would have been the first role that I’d done in an accent that was close to mine. I’m from Teeside, so my accent’s a bit Geordie, as opposed to Yorkshire.
“And there’s really something very specific about Yorkshire and the moors and how that makes you who you are, especially the way that they live and where they live, the isolation and just the epicness of the landscape.”
Wuthering Heights was screened in America back in January. Has she had much feedback?
“A couple of casting directors in America have seen it and been in touch. But other than that, not particularly. I don’t really know how these things work. I’m not entirely sure. I read a couple of reviews and it was cool.” (...)
“I guess when you’re developing a character, you have to look at the things you already have as Charlotte, and the things that Cathy has. And some of the things match up and some of them don’t.”
The ITV1 adaptation was filmed entirely on location in Yorkshire.
“I’d been to some of the locations before. One thing I used to do with my mother, every Friday we used to walk up to this place called Roseberry Topping, which is near our house and a similar kind of landscape. I’d spend a lot of time walking with the family and just being outdoors. Things like that I just love.
“We live in the countryside. When I was little I used to just go out – we’d get up, sometimes before mum and dad were up, you’d just make your garlic cheese sandwiches, your Boursin sandwiches, and head out for the day, make dens and come back. We just spent all of our childhood with my best friend Caroline, with this never ending search for this perfect spot for a den, which we never found.”
The landscape is integral to Wuthering Heights, Cathy and Heathcliff.
“That part of the world is so unique and so beautiful. There’s something absolutely magical about the moors and I think our adaptation has more of the landscape in than I think any other adaptation. You’ve got to use that because it’s integral to their relationship and why they are the way that they are and why you have to love like that. You can love like that because it’s so massive and you can be huge and demonstrative, because there’s no-one to stop you.”
Charlotte has said the people don’t love like that anymore.
“You know when your friend has got a new boyfriend because you don’t hear from them. You do try and create that Cathy and Heathcliff bubble, to just indulge in each other. But they have that all the time because they don’t have a mother and their father is essentially absent. In the book he turns to alcohol but he just gets older in our adaptation. And Nellie doesn’t have control over them. She’s just their nanny. So they do what they want, when they want. They’re little urchins.”
Working with Tom Hardy?
“He does get very into his roles but it’s something he switches on and off very quickly and very easily. He’s a very hard working, intense person but he’s wonderful to work with because he’s very open, very supportive and he works really hard, which inspires you to work hard.
“I remember when I got the role, I was like, ‘Right, so Tom Hardy’s Heathcliff, I’m going to work hard anyway but I know now…' He’s very inspiring to work with because he brings so much energy to a set and injects so much life into everything. If you’re playing opposite someone like that, you have to give as much as you’re getting.“
The book is both romantic and brutal?
“A lot of the way that they are with each other is totally unhealthy but it’s the only way that they know how to love. The interesting thing about Cathy and Heathcliff is that they are terribly compatible. Not many people have that capacity to love like that and they fit quite well together. That’s why Edgar is driven mad by Cathy because she doesn’t love him in the way that she loves Heathcliff.
“They are best friends, they mother each other, they father each other, they are lovers. It really works. What ruins it is – the crux of the whole thing for me anyway is when she is bitten by the dog and she goes to Thrushcross Grange and she sees how the world sees them and how they can’t exist like that. It can’t work like that. She says, ‘I want to aid you to rise out of my brother’s power, that’s why I will marry Edgar.’ She’s like, ‘You don’t see how people see us.’
“As they’re coming of age, they can’t behave like this anymore and she sees that before he does. He doesn’t understand why not. She is the first of the pair of them to experience the restrictions of society in those days and the fact that really weirdly, she becomes the provider in their relationship.
“The only bit of power she has with some vague semblence of her title, in terms of being Miss Earnshaw, means she can marry Edgar. That will make her wealthy and that’s how she can take care of Heathcliff. He has nothing. He has no title. A lot of it is structured in their society. From my point of view, what she’s trying to do is take care of him. And in a very stupid way, as well. She’s like, ‘Well, why can’t I do that? We can still love each other?’ And he’s like, ‘Well, no, you’re going to be with him you’re going to be married, of course not.’
“She’s the only one who can save them from themselves. They very quickly come of age. What would they do? How would they survive? The bubble is burst for her when she goes there.
“They’re so cruel to each other. The wonderful thing about Wuthering Heights is the tragedy.” (Ian Wylie)

The Houston Chronicle talks about Ruben Toledo's new Wuthering Heights cover for Penguin Classics Deluxe:

Using ink and watercolor, Toledo created fold-out covers for special Penguin editions of Pride and Prejudice, The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights. (...)
The Brontë cover offers a touch of Edward Gorey (remember his Gashlycrumb Tinies?). Rotor said people have drawn parallels between Toledo's vision of this gothic masterpiece and the current hit series Twilight. However the cover strikes you, Toledo has captured the lonely moors, the passion of a windswept Catherine and the smoldering intensity of Heathcliff, who stands by himself — gloomily and fashionably — on the back cover. (Maggie Galehouse)

The Star (Malaysia) talks about the generation Y and mentions Jane Eyre (as a symbol of the generation B?):

If that is the case, it would be a pity seeing that film has a unique power in defining modern generational groups the way books by authors like Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens were adept at doing the same for their respective generations. (Jason Lim)

Indigoaalane and Palabras Casi Olvidadas review Wuthering Heights in Estonian and Spanish respectively, Mellowed Heart posts about Emily Brontë, Red Curtain posts screencaps and icons from Jane Eyre 1944, Ivory Tower talks about Jane Eyre, Scrapbooks and Photograph Albums talks about a recent visit to Haworth and the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Precisely, the people at the Parsonage are behind a new Brontë-related blog: Brontë Parsonage Women's Writing:

The Brontë Parsonage Museum has received funding to develop a series of projects that celebrate and showcase women's writing, as part of a vibrant contemporary arts programme that already exists at the museum. The Brontës were pioneering women writers and we hope that this project will enable a variety of writers, readers and visitors, to explore the museum, the Brontës and their work in new ways, but also to inspire new responses and creativity. There will be event days at the museum, as well as readings by prominent and emerging women writers (which will hopefully be podcasted on this site) and a writer in residence who will create a special project for teenage girls in the local community. All the events will be recorded here on this blog... (Jenna)

Sarah Hymas and Sue Wood's creative writing day at the Parsonage is reported here and Jane Commane and Char March's poetry day is summarised here.

Categories: Books, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights