'Let's get Barbie and Elvis to play Cathy and Heathcliff!'

Lots of sites are accepting at face value the claims of know-it-all X users and accusing Emerald Fennell of 'whitewashing' Heathcliff. We are truly astounded as to how decades of debate by scholars can be boiled down to pure knowledge in a few seconds on X by quoting just one sentence out of many, sometimes seemingly contradictory, descriptions of Heathcliff in the novel. We love a good discussion about all things Brontë, but people who think they are in possession of the truth are quite tiresome. So, with apologies to anyone who finds it as pointless--and quite honestly, boring--as us, here goes:

From the BBC:

"White Heathcliff and 34-year-old Cathy, and they both look like they belong on Instagram. I'm obsessed," wrote TV and film critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw.

She added: "Emerald Fennell does it again [derogatory]." (Ian Youngs)

The BBC then goes on to list 'Wuthering Heights: Hollywood's worst casting decisions'.

Catherine is a teenager who lives on a farm in England in the late-1700s. Heathcliff is a dark-skinned foundling of around the same age. As the heroine and hero of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, their love story has been imagined by countless readers since the novel was published in 1847, but not many of those readers will have pictured them as the spitting images of Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Jacob Elordi (Elvis Presley in Priscilla). Still, Emerald Fennell is not like the rest of us. The Oscar-winning writer-director of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn is making a film of Wuthering Heights, and she announced earlier this week that her Catherine and Heathcliff would be played by two impossibly good-looking Australians, one aged 34, the other aged 27.

The online response hasn't been wholly positive. Brontë fans on social media called the casting "disappointing", "terrible" and "bizarre", and The Independent's film critic Clarisse Loughrey asked: "Did anyone actually read the book before deciding this?"

To be fair, we don't know what Fennell has planned. Maybe her adaptation will be a glitzy and irreverent update with a disco soundtrack and a naked dance routine on the windswept Yorkshire moors. But there is no doubt that at first glance the casting seems fundamentally, egregiously wrong: it has that mind-boggling, what-were-they-thinking quality which brings to mind a crass producer in a Hollywood satire, barking: "Wuthering Heights is kinda drab – let's get Barbie and Elvis to play Cathy and Heathcliff!" [...]

In the case of Wuthering Heights, you could argue that Fennell was simply sticking to Hollywood tradition: Laurence Olivier was in his 30s when he played Heathcliff in the classic 1939 film of the novel. But we are a lot more judgemental about age-inappropriate casting than we used to be. [...]

The issue with Wuthering Heights is that the darkness of Heathcliff's skin is mentioned several times in the novel, so it seems perverse of a new film to ignore it. Considering 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.[...]

Still, it's their very glamour that accounts for Robbie and Elordi's casting in Wuthering Heights. When two actors have the popularity and the sex appeal that they do, the prospect of seeing them both in the same film will, in theory, be too much for audiences to resist. Another small point is that Robbie didn't just star in Barbie, the highest grossing film of 2023, she produced it, too – and she also produced Saltburn. If she wants to star in Wuthering Heights, then who's going to stop her? Tom Cruise, again, is not known for his mountainous height, his bulging muscles or his blond hair, but he was the A-list producer of the two Jack Reacher films, so when he made the ridiculous decision to play Lee Child's giant vigilante, nobody was going to say no.

The good news is that whatever else Robbie and Elordi may be, they are also brilliant actors. If anyone can make such problematic casting work, then they can. Finally, we should bear in mind that things could always be worse. In 1996, there was a Wuthering Heights musical called Heathcliff, which starred and was co-written by Cliff Richard.

The show opened just after Richard's 56th birthday. (Nicholas Barber)

According to a columnist from Metro, 'Hollywood is still making the same appalling mistake in 2024'.

Admittedly, casting the film version of one of the world’s best known novels can’t be an easy task.

So when the cast of Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming take on Wuthering Heights was revealed earlier this week, it was always going to be a hot topic of discussion – and almost immediately, people made their criticisms clear. 

The protagonists, doomed lovers Catherine ‘Cathy’ Earnshaw and Heathcliff, will be played by Barbie star Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, who is known for playing attractive but unreachable love interests in Saltburn and Euphoria, as well as Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s 2023 biopic, Priscilla. 

There’s no doubt that they both have serious acting chops, but many would-be fans have pushed back against their inclusion in the film.

However, the majority of the criticism over this casting has been reserved for the choice to cast Elordi, a white man, as Heathcliff – a famously non-white character.

And to me, the pushback is valid – even a cursory search on Google will point to Brontë’s Heathcliff being a person of colour, so why is he being represented by a white actor?

Brontë repeatedly referred to Heathcliff’s dark complexion and ‘otherness’ throughout the novel. 

On one page, Heathcliff is described as a ‘dark-skinned gipsy in aspect’, while another refers to his ‘dusky fingers’. Characters debate his appearances to be of a ‘Lascar’ – a dated description meaning a sailor from India or Southeast Asia – or ‘an American or Spanish castaway’. 

While the intricacies of Heathcliff’s ethnicity are still debated, his difference to the starkly white society he entered as a young child was clear.

And yet – most Wuthering Heights interpretations since the early 20th century have cast white men as the central anti-hero, with previous depictions coming courtesy of Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Timothy Dalton, Ralph Fiennes and Tom Hardy.

It’s pretty much tradition for on-screen Heathcliffs to be white at this point – and as much as we might be used to it, it still packs a disappointing punch to see the role miscast once again.

Not all Wuthering Heights adaptations have fallen into this casting trap. The 2011 version directed by Andrea Arnold saw Skins star Kaya Scodelario and first-time actor James Howson take on the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff, and received critical and audience praise for their reimagining. 

Howson is one of the only non-white actors to have portrayed Heathcliff in a mainstream capacity, bringing the character closer to Brontë’s intended presentation.

What a shame that 13 years later, takes on Wuthering Heights haven’t progressed further than this.

In fact, they’ve gone backwards.

Heathcliff’s non-whiteness is an essential part of his character, and informs his interactions with the rest of the world.

In one passage, Mr Earnshaw, Cathy’s father, describes Heathcliff to be ‘as dark almost as if it came from the devil’ – clearly conflating his appearance with his moral character.

With Elordi adding to the appallingly long list of white men to play Heathcliff, Fennell eliminates several important layers of rich context.

Not only that, but she’s shutting down a valid conversation around how race can affect how people view a person, and how a person views themselves.

The wasted opportunities don’t stop there.

It’s been suggested that Brontë’s description of Heathcliff represents a Romani character – which means Fennell’s version of the story could have been a long-needed display of Romani identity in a mainstream project, even if an unknown actor was positioned in the role.

Not only does the casting of yet another white man take away from the story, this choice has been criticised as yet another example of whitewashing in the entertainment industry – the practice of presenting non-white characters with white actors.

Of course, filling a film with familiar faces is a safer commercial bet than a cast of fresh talent. But without people with power in the industry using their privilege to make changes, the dial doesn’t move.

We don’t get closer to having a Romani film star by refusing to search for, and nurture, unseen talent – instead, we get more of the same. [...]

What Fennell does with the literary staple is yet to be seen – for all we know, her interpretation of Cathy and Heathcliff could far surpass the expectations cast upon it at present. 

Taking Fennell’s previous films Promising Young Woman and Saltburn into account, I imagine her Wuthering Heights will lean towards the eccentric, and take shocking risks to keep its viewers on their toes.

But the world has seen enough white Heathcliffs – I doubt that this new version will do much to change my mind. (Nicole Vassell)

A contributor to LitHub tells us why 'Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation is very, very badly cast'.

I think everyone is on the same page—which is to say, angry [are we?]. 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. [...]

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 little freak 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!

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 hand 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 to fear 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 either need two unknown actors or a pair of well-known weirdo actors. 

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! I CRTL + F’ed it! 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 as a 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 both a brother and as a man. 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 that snowball as the novel goes on. There can’t be a love story without the story of Heathcliff’s “otherness.”

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 nicer-seeming 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. (Olivia Rutigliano)

The description quoted is just one of many, often contradictory, sometimes moral, descriptions. It's not as clear cut, never has been. And no, 'The point of Wuthering Heights is [not] that Heathcliff is ultimately cast out from the Earnshaw family and demoted to the rank of servant because he is nonwhite and low-class', it's far more about class than race. As we said yesterday, what would be the point of having Heathcliff come back rich only to find out that that changes nothing at all if it was about race? He'd come back looking the same, so he'd expect the same reactions. It's all about him finding out that you can't buy your way into the upper classes.

And just for reference, here's how Jane Austen describes the Crawfords in Mansfield Park:

Miss Crawford’s beauty did her no disservice with the Miss Bertrams. They were too handsome themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown complexion, and general prettiness. Had she been tall, full formed, and fair, it might have been more of a trial: but as it was, there could be no comparison; and she was most allowably a sweet, pretty girl, while they were the finest young women in the country.

Her brother was not handsome: no, when they first saw him he was absolutely plain, black and plain; but still he was the gentleman, with a pleasing address. (Our bold)

Both black and brown are applied to them and no one has ever claimed that they really were. Heathcliff's skin may be darker, but quite what that implied in Victorian times--and more so bearing in mind Emily's seemingly highly varying descriptions of Heathcliff--is literally anyone's guess.

Marie Claire quotes from the X experts:

"So, we have Margot Robbie playing a girl who dies at 19, and Jacob Elordi playing a character whose treatment in the narrative is directly tied to his racial ambiguity/not whiteness, have I got that right?" commented one X user.

"I love Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, and Emerald Fennell––but this is A CHOICE," observed writer Sophie Vershbow.

"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," said someone else. (Iris Goldsztajn)

Vogue wonders, 'What Should We Actually Expect From Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights?'

People are up in arms, I think, because Elordi and Robbie don’t tally with their idea of psychologically tortured lovers in late 18th-century England. With Fennell at the helm, will Barbie be slurping Elvis’s bathwater as Kate Bush plays softly in the background? We’ll be spared an excruciating extubation moment, as those weren’t invented yet, but will Heathcliff hump Cathy’s grave? He does make a somewhat macabre request to a gravedigger in regard to her buried coffin, which is firmly Fennell territory— alongside the revenge, jealousy, hysteria, and dark infatuations that have made Wuthering Heights such a provocative and enduring horror classic. And we already know she loves a big ol’ house.

Personally, I don’t think either actor will have trouble depicting landed gentry: Robbie seems ergonomically designed to be corseted on a hilltop, and the female-rage vein of the novel could be exciting for her to play. On the other hand, while Brisbane-born Elordi would not be the first white actor to play the ethnically ambiguous “dark-skinned gypsy” Heathcliff, it feels like a misstep on Fennell’s part to skip over the brutal racism at the heart of this canonically nonwhite character, who famously cries as a young boy: “I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed, and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!” We’re now so aware of how deeply race seeps into our worldview, of how insidious its roots are, that we know well it isn’t something that can—or should—just be swept under the carpet. So, I’m keen to see how Fennell’s capable hands grapple with a prominent race storyline, fronted by a white guy.

The film isn’t hitting screens until 2026, so we’ll be speculating on the outcome. (Imagine it’s set… in Australia!? Will they do Yorkshire accents!?) and gobbling up pap shots from the set for months to come. In the meantime, all I can say is Heathcliff, it’s me, it’s Barbie. I’ve come home. (Raven Smith)

Again no, Wuthering Heights is not about race, it's about class.

How can we take The Standard seriously about anything when it says that Wuthering Heights was published in 1850 instead of 1847?

The 1850 classic follows the tribulations of the Earnshaw and Linton families in rural Yorkshire and the trouble caused by the Earnshaws’ foster son, Heathcliff. At this stage, it’s not known how closely Fennell’s version will follow the book. (Sian Baldwin)

It goes on and on on NME, Daily Dot, Deadline, Tellyvisions, World of Reel, Coming Soon, USA Today and a long, long etcetera. We can't help but think about the time when a few people arched an eyebrow during the filming of Frances O'Connor's Emily and she commented dismissively on 'Brontë purists'. Well, this is quite something else, isn't it?

Onto a couple of different things now. the BBC has announced 'major new commissions across TV and Radio' and one of them is a reading of Wuthering Heights (after all this we are starting to think that radio is the way forward).

The Read, where acclaimed actors combine with classic literature and breathe new life into iconic stories, launches its third series this autumn. New episodes feature readings of George Orwell’s 1984 performed by Sacha Dhawan; Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol performed by Anne-Marie Duff; Robert Louis Stephenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde performed by Reece Shearsmith and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights performed by Vinette Robinson.

Actualidad Literatura (Spain) interviews writer Nuria Rivera.

Mariola Díaz-Cano Arévalo: ¿Puedes recordar alguna de tus primeras lecturas? ¿Y lo primero que escribiste?

N.R.: Entre mis primeras lecturas de niña recuerdo Esther y su mundo, Los Cinco, de Enid Blyton, y los libros de Sissi, aquellos de Bruguera que venían ilustrados. Luego lecturas que mandaban en el instituto. El guardián entre el centeno, de J. D. Salinger, me impresionó bastante. Pero lo que realmente descubrí en literatura en mi época adolescente del instituto fue a las hermanas Brontë y a Jane Austen. Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë, con el oscuro y torturado Heathcliff me encantó, igual que Jane Eyre, de su hermana Charlotte, o Persuasión, de J. Austen, con el encantador capitán Wentworth, y Orgullo y prejuicio, con el orgulloso y torpe social señor Darcy. Novelas que he releído en más de una ocasión. () (Translation)