Wuthering’s insults: Why are filmmakers afraid to cast Yorkshire actors as Cathy Earnshaw? | Wuthering Heights

eMerald Fennell’s choices for her remake of Wuthering Heights have already been much scrutinized. In addition to the obvious “whitewashing” of Heathcliff by casting Jacob Elordi in the role, there’s the fact that 35-year-old Margot Robbie is playing a woman 20 years her junior.

Plus, they’re Australian, not British, and certainly not from Yorkshire. Fennell has defended her casting choices as a “personal fantasy” — but amid all the ridicule and chatter surrounding the film and its countless deviations from the book, the erasure of regional authenticity may not get enough discussion.

Wuthering Heights, one of the world’s most revered novels, is inseparable from the moody landscape of the Yorkshire moors. However, screen adaptations have consistently neglected the local identity of their central character. Across all the major adaptations, from Merle Oberon in 1939 to Kaya Scodelario in 2011, Cathy has not been portrayed by a Yorkshire woman, let alone by an actor from Bradford, the cultural heartland of the novel’s setting and the city in which it was written.

The latest release of Vinyl perpetuates this pattern, marginalizing Northern talent in a moment that could have been pivotal in uplifting underrepresented talent. The film’s only Bradford-born actress, Jessica Knappett, plays Mrs Burton, the maid.

Choosing Wuthering Heights without considering regional specificity is not a neutral creative decision. While Ruby may be “so beautiful and interesting and amazing,” according to Fennell, such star-driven considerations constitute a depressing rejection of the environment that concocted Cathy’s mood. Cathy is not merely situated within a landscape, but is symbiotically shaped by it.

“The Yorkshire Moors highlights the story of Cathy and Heathcliff particularly in the context of the working-class demonstrations of the time,” says Amber Barry, a doctoral researcher in Victorian literature at King’s College London. “Can we call this Wuthering Heights if such a crucial setting is reduced to a flat, vaguely Gothic backdrop?”

As a Bradford-born actress, I have experienced barriers in the arts first-hand, and I believe that casting choices like Fennell’s perpetuate a system that devalues ​​northern women. Of course, acting is a transformative craft – performers are expected to live lives far removed from their own, myself included. But the problem is not that actors should not extend beyond their life experience. The question is much broader: when a major production depicts an educational narrative steeped in landscape, dialect, and cultural identity, why should the people of that region be denied such life-changing opportunities? It’s not about choosing between celebrities and indigenous actors at a regional level, it’s about asking why so few actors from Bradford have achieved the necessary level of visibility to be considered at all.

Structural biases in training, access, industry networks and commissioning maintain this disparity; For example, research shows that nearly a third of BAFTA-nominated actors are privately educated. Naturally, star power attracts audiences and funding, but there is room for emerging regional talent to exist alongside established actors.

Bradford’s social and economic context only exacerbates this disparity. The area is the 12th most deprived in England, fourth most income deprived, and fifth most employed, with 19.8% of households in fuel poverty, 40% of children living below the poverty line, and 12% of the working-age population lacking formal qualifications. Roles like Cathy Earnshaw’s, intrinsically linked to Yorkshire, would have offered a rare rejection of the marginalization of northern actors, and a career-defining moment for talent from an under-represented background.

Hollywood’s focus on star power over geographic authenticity reflects a broader bias in the industry, where women make up only about 30% of UK film roles, and northern women are disproportionately cast in stereotypical or comedic roles, rather than complex, upper-middle-class characters like Cathy. Northern stereotypes in film and television fall within a narrow range of familiar tropes, casually reinforcing prejudices rather than attempting nuance.

While such images may seem innocuous in isolation, collectively they establish a pattern in which Northern characters, especially women, are stereotyped as working-class, comical, anarchic, or intellectually limited, and rarely depicted as romantic heroines. A Channel 4 report found that northern accents were twice as likely to be coded as working class, and were much less likely to be used in ads promoting aspirational products such as luxury goods. The report concluded that the representation of working-class people in the ads was low and weak, undermining the ad’s ostensible aim of promoting ambition and strengthening the association between prestige and non-Northern identities.

Wuthering Heights isn’t the only problem, but it’s another blow to people always constrained by societal expectations. When Cathy says, “I’m as sure I should be as myself as I once was among the heather on those hills,” she clearly expresses a truth that resonates with me deeply; This particular scene shaped my sense of self, as it did for so many others, and it is precisely for this reason that continued underrepresentation makes me feel so profoundly ostracized.