Emerald Fennell hopes Wuthering Heights will elicit an ‘initial reaction’ | Wuthering Heights

Emerald Fennell has revealed that Margot Robbie asked if she could play the lead role in the Wuthering Heights film adaptation before she approached the actor to do so.

Robbie, whose production company LuckyChap Entertainment produced the film, asked if she could play Cathy after reading the script. “I sent her to them to make the film, and luckily I asked Margot if she could play Cathy,” Fennell said in a talk at the BFI Southbank in London.

“I was very nervous when I asked her, because I think we had a different relationship, and I didn’t want to put her in that position,” she said. “I was like: ‘Should I go for it?’ “No, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t, because she’s braver than me. She asked me.”

However, the decision to cast Robbie in the role of Cathy led to much skepticism and scrutiny prior to the film’s release, specifically for its departure from the original 1847 novel written by Emily Brontë.

Robbie, 35, will play Catherine Earnshaw, who wrote in her late teens in the original novel. The casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff has also been criticized. In the book, Brontë described the character as being of “gypsy” and “Lascar” (South Asian) descent, which explains the bias against him in the book.

But Fennell defended her decision. “I can’t adapt the book as it is, but I can approximate the way I feel,” she said.

Casting director Harmel Cochrane also defended the casting at the Sands Film Festival in Scotland last summer, saying there was “no need to be precise” and that it was “just a book”.

Robbie co-founded the production company LuckyChap Entertainment in 2014 with her husband, Tom Ackerley, as well as producers Josie McNamara and Sophia Kerr. The company produced Fennell’s previous two films, Saltburn and Promising Young Woman.

The film adaptation of Wuthering Heights will premiere on February 5 in London’s Leicester Square, and will be released in UK cinemas on February 13 for the Valentine’s Day weekend.

The film premiered in Los Angeles on January 28, and was described by critics as “intoxicating, transcendent, exciting, enchanting, aphrodisiac, and hypnotic” – although full reviews have been embargoed until February 8.

Fennell’s directorial style has been characterized by her bold, provocative and sometimes indulgent social commentary. Speaking about how this style will continue in her latest film, she said: “Wuthering Heights needs to evoke some kind of primal response.”

The director also spoke about the background behind the set design in the film, revealing that the wallpaper in Cathy’s bedroom was inspired by images of Ruby’s skin.

She said: “We asked her to send us all her veins and freckles, then we printed them on silk, stuffed them, and put latex on top of them so they would sweat.” “At first glance, you don’t see any of it, it’s just a pretty pink room.”

“It serves as a visual example of what it feels like to become a wife, or to become an object of beauty, or to become a collector’s item.”

Other unconventional behind-the-scenes activities include vinyl shrines made of Elordi and Ruby as a way to mimic their characters’ infatuation with each other in the film. “I would say, ‘I’ll go online, I’ll find their best pictures, and then I’ll create shrines in their bedrooms to each other,'” she said.

“So when Jacob went into his room, he had a crazy shrine to worship not only Kathy, but also Margot Robbie, and then she had the same thing. There’s nothing more human than someone’s first press photo.”

Fennell also talked about the process of engaging Charli xcx to create the film’s soundtrack: “I sent the script to Charli. Even though she was in the middle of the Naughty Tour, and she’s the busiest person in the entire world, she read it right away.”

“She called me and said, ‘What do you want?’ I said, “Okay, that would be a nice song.” She said: What about the album? And I was like: “Yes, cool.”

“It’s a very stupid album, but it’s my favorite album I’ve ever heard in my life. I just got it.”