It's Wuthering Heights winter

Emerald Fennell herself interviews Jacob Elordi for the March-April 2026 issue of Esquire, which is out on 18 February.

Emerald Fennell: OK, so number-one question: Jacob, is this your favourite film you’ve ever seen?

Jacob Elordi: Yes, and it’s also my favourite film I’ve been in. [...]

EF: Do you think it was a threat? A warning? Do you think it was one of your giant handbags? There were lots of hauntings when we were making Wuthering Heights. It was back-to-back hauntings, but we kept things from the actors because you’re such sensitive characters.

JE: A frightful bunch.

EF: A fearful, scared, skittish bunch. But we were all haunted constantly. It was really weird because it felt so right. We stayed in lots of beautiful hotels in Yorkshire and in one hotel, me and Linus [Sandgren], the cinematographer, had bedrooms next door to one another. One night, I kept on waking up with someone tapping on my forehead.

JE: It was just me asking for monologues.

EF: “Can I get coverage? Make sure people see how tall I am.” But this thing tapping me on the forehead wanted me to put the television on. It was very insistent. In my mind I was like, “I’m sorry, I can’t put the telly on, I’ve got to be up really early in the morning.” The next day I went down for breakfast and told the crew. Then Linus came down five minutes later and said, “It’s so fucking weird” — I’m not going to do the Swedish accent — “I couldn’t sleep last night because the television kept turning on and off.” This kind of stuff happened all the time, which is to say that I think we were very in touch with the spiritual world while making this film. Did you feel in touch with the spiritual world while making this film, Jacob?

JE: Yeah, something peculiar that happened while we were filming was when Siân [Miller], the make-up artist, was designing the scars from the whips for Heathcliff’s back. She challenged me: “If Daniel Day-Lewis was playing Heathcliff, he would have come in with scars.” I said, “Well I’m going to go

away and maim myself on the weekend to prove to you that I’m Heathcliff!” That night I went home, and the house I was staying in had a steam shower: a brass knob that steam came from out of the wall; I was sitting on the floor of the shower…

EF: You were sitting on the floor?!

JE: The full story is that, when I was doing Frankenstein, I had so much make-up in my fingers and in my feet all the time, and I left it on for the whole shoot because I couldn’t be bothered washing it all off. As Heathcliff, I was covered in mange and dirt, and I thought, “I’m not going to do that again, I’m going to clean my feet properly every night and come in to work fresh the next day.” So I went to clean my feet, and I leant back and my back seared into the steam knob and I stood up screaming; it tore up my back. When I went to work on Monday I had a second-degree burn.

EF: I think that was in the first week of shooting. I got a text from Josey McNamara, the producer, saying, “Jacob’s in hospital.” Obviously I thought, “Oh my god, he’s had a car accident,” and then he was like, “He’s burnt his back in the shower.” I was like, “You know what, Josey? Start with that.” Do

you think it was the spirit of Daniel Day-Lewis?

JE: It was actual Daniel Day-Lewis. In the shower. But I did feel something spiritual when we got to the Moors for the first time, when we stepped out in our costumes on this endless plain. You can see where the book came from when you’re there. You can feel it. [...]

EF: [...] When you said yes to Wuthering Heights had you even read the script? Or did I just text you?

JE: No, I was in Indonesia, and you just WhatsApped me, “Wanna play Heathcliff?” And I wrote back, “Yeah.” And then you said, “Cool, I’ll send you the script.” And that was it.

EF: And that’s how dreams are made. You did send me my favourite ever picture, which was a picture of the script covered in your tears. The most emo thing…

JE: Ha! I was in an Airbnb in Santa Barbara because I took myself away to read the script. I was sitting on the back porch having a coffee and I read the last scene and I just… leaked. I was leaking all over the screenplay and I sent you a picture. I’m pretty sure everyone else in the cast had a similar…

EF: No! Haha. That’s why I love working with you, because you’re really honest about your feelings. And that was the aim of this movie: to make everyone cry so much that they would throw up.

JE: I watched it with Mum last week and we were both looking at each other, and I shouldn’t say this, because it’s me in the movie, but my head was aching. We wanted to stop weeping but couldn’t because it’s relentlessly sad and sensitive and very personal from you.

EF: He’s trying to imply that I have emotions.

JE: I remember we were texting when the film was going somewhere, and when you chose to make the film at Warner Bros and turn down an enormous sum of money — which is no secret, it’s in the press — so that the film could go to cinemas. It’s why, when you say, “Wanna play Heathcliff?” I say “Yes.” [...]

EF: We do need communal experiences. After Covid, everyone wants to go and connect. It’s why Charli [xcx]’s music for this is so amazing. Everyone wants to go dance. One of the first cinema experiences I ever had was watching My Girl and it destroyed my life. It was my birthday and I was five or six. I was like, “Why did you do this to me? You let me see Macaulay Culkin, the boy of my dreams — spoiler alert — get stung to death by a swarm of bees while getting the love of his life’s mood ring.” It’s evil. But from that to Titanic to [Baz Luhrmann’s] Romeo + Juliet to Armageddon, if you please, that experience of going into a packed theatre and all of you fucking crying and feeling sexy and having an experience, it’s about bringing back that feeling. It gives me the ick whenever someone says, “I use ChatGPT.” It’s like, “Grow up, get a pen and write something down. Make something.”

JE: We’ve designed this thing that has tricked young people and made them all addicted to a new form of content and a new form of life and then we blame them for it. But I think they’re going to turn around and want more, because they’re human beings and they have millions of years of evolution and human history and culture; real things are in their DNA. And when they do turn around, it’s everyone’s job to make sure that there’s things there for them to digest. Does that make sense? That’s a terrible way of explaining it, but that’s how I feel about movies now particularly.

EF: It’s also so that they can participate. Wuthering Heights was 600 people, maybe more, constructing stuff from scratch. Their work is real and specific and detailed and that’s the pleasure of it, as long as we can keeping makingstuff.

JE: It’s important to say that it’s important just because.

EF: Just because. But also, crucially, it’s sexy, fun and cool. [...]

JE: But I feel very afraid. The older I get, the more nervous I get, and I was afraid of Wuthering Heights; it was a big movie, and the crew was big and the sets were big.

EF: Yes, and also Margot is the biggest star in the world and you’re playing opposite each other. It’s fucking big. I came to work some days and was like,“Shit, I’m in charge of this.”

JE: I try to make sure I’ve turned every stone and looked in every corner before playing a character, but the truth is you can’t. But the fear comes from: have I looked enough? Have I studied enough? Have I read enough? Because, like you said, there’s 600 people there that have put so much work and effort in, who’ve toiled and waited and not seen their families, and then you need to come in and put a layer onto the cake. There is a pressure that you’re not going to be what people want you to be. There will probably always be an imposter element to acting for me, just because I dreamt about it so intensely that it almost feels like it couldn’t have happened. (Miranda Collinge) 

The New York Times reveals that Wuthering Heights will be their Book Review Book Club's February read.

2026 may have just started, but we’re already thinking about another year. Specifically, the year 1801. Why? Because it’s “Wuthering Heights” winter and we’re flashing back to Emily Brontë’s 19th-century moors! [...]

Brontë’s classic has long been a favorite among readers, and this February the novel is getting a new film adaptation directed by Emerald Fennell, and starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. The movie has catapulted “Wuthering Heights” back into the zeitgeist and reinspired frenzy for Brontë’s moors.

That’s why, in February, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “Wuthering Heights.” We’ll be chatting about it on the Book Review podcast that airs on Feb. 27 and we’d love for you to join the conversation. Share your thoughts about the novel in the comments section of this article by Feb. 18, and we may mention your observations in the episode.

Here’s some related reading to get you started.

Our 1939 feature story went behind the scenes of Samuel Goldwyn’s celebrated film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” and paraphrased Emily’s equally renowned sister, Charlotte, in assessing the allure of the novel: “‘Wuthering Heights’ was hewn in a wild workshop, in the literature of the screen as in literature. And the amazing, the incredible thing is that it has come so well-hewn to its new medium. We must not say that its spirit has survived Hollywood, for that would be misinterpreted; rather that its spirit is enduring, in one medium and another, which proves that Emily Brontë’s strange and twisted novel is a true classic, ageless and imperishable.” Read the full article here.

Our 2012 article about the challenges of adapting “Wuthering Heights”: “With more than a dozen film versions, Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ is something of a cultural touchstone for ill-fated love. The title alone conjures up images of a brooding Heathcliff and a delicate Cathy clinging to each other or suffering alone on the Yorkshire moors. For many fans, the characters are synonymous with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in the 1939 movie. And yet, at least when it comes to screen adaptations, the novel may be the most misunderstood book of all time.” Read the full article here. [...]

LitHub’s 2018 article rounding up what famous authors (like Virginia Woolf, Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion, and more) have said about “Wuthering Heights.” You can read the full story here. (MJ Franklin)

A contributor to Bakersfield is also reading Wuthering Heights in February. ¡Hola! (Spain) claims that Wuthering Heights changed the history of women's literature. Revista Actual (in Spanish) has an article on why readers are still obsessed with Wuthering Heights. Mirror takes a look at viewers' opinions of Wuthering Heights 1992 calling it a 'forgotten adaptation' though we're pretty sure it isn't. 

Time takes a look at the so-called domestic thriller genre.

Also known as domestic suspense or domestic noir, the term generally encompasses psychological thrillers that are set in the home or neighborhood; interrogate familial or community relationships; and, usually, center around female characters. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, with its haunted female narrator and madwoman in the attic, retroactively fits this brief. [...]

Big Little Lies made wealth disparity a crucial ingredient of the new domestic thriller. Like Jane Eyre—a governess who fell for her affluent employer—Woodley’s character, a young single mother, is a broke outsider in an exclusive community. Yet instead of marrying a local bigwig, she recognizes one of them as her son’s rapist father, catalyzing his demise. Storylines like this, in our age of escalating eat-the-rich sentiment, allow viewers to vicariously enjoy beautiful homes and high-maintenance bodies while also fantasizing about (or, for more comfortable audiences, safely exploring fears of) class warfare. (Judy Berman)

BBC News reports that West Riddlesden Hall in Keighley is on the market.

A 17th Century manor house with links to the Brontë sisters has gone up for sale for more than £1m.

West Riddlesden Hall in Keighley was built in 1687 for Thomas Leach in the same style as sister house East Riddlesden Hall, which is now a National Trust attraction.

The Grade I-listed property still has the original oak panels in the reception hall and was home to many of the town's most prominent families over the years.

Current owner John Pennington is selling to downsize and said the house was full of history and mysterious stories - including the existence of a secret passageway. 

Pennington, a businessman who was once an auctioneer for Bradford Wool Sales and later restored the city's Midland Hotel in the 1990s, said that Thomas Leach's descendants owned Strong Close Mill, which became Dalton Mills, in Keighley.

"I'll pull the curtains back first thing in the morning and you're looking out on to wonderful gardens, so it's a great start to the day," he said.

"Each of the halls has a tower, quite an impressive tower with a large rose wool window in it and the only difference between my house and East Riddlesden is I have a flagpole on top of mine."

The Leaches' association with the manor lasted for 175 years before they sold it in 1809 to the Greenwoods, who were also in the textiles trade.

The mill-owning Sidgwick family lived at the hall in the mid-19th Century, and Charlotte Bronte was a governess for their children. John Benson Sidgwick is widely claimed to have been the inspiration for Mr Rochester in her novel Jane Eyre. (Grace Wood)

In case the name rings a bell, Wuthering Heights 2009 was partly filmed in sister house East Riddlesden Hall.