A new, unrestrained Wuthering Heights
Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights arrives as a bold, contemporary-spirited take on Emily Brontë’s classic. The loose adaptation centers on the incendiary relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, respectively. The film—also featuring Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, and Shazad Latif—poses a familiar question through a fresh lens: how far will love push you, and what happens when devotion turns to obsession?
Robbie and Elordi recently discussed their approach to the roles, the film’s emotional core, and a production moment they say helped define the characters’ dynamic.
Passion without moderation: playing Catherine and Heathcliff
For Robbie, the defining quality of Catherine and Heathcliff is extremity. “There’s not a whole lot of balance in their passion and obsession. It’s really off the deep end,” she said, summing up the couple’s all-or-nothing devotion. “They love completely with every fiber of their beings, and they also hurt as hard as they love, which makes for a great drama.”
Elordi agreed with the framing and praised the intensity both actors brought to the material. Robbie noted that Elordi’s commitment on set elevated her performance: his ferocity encouraged her to meet him at the same emotional pitch rather than temper the characters’ volatility.
The axe-cutting scene: a blueprint for the film’s tension
Both actors highlighted a specific moment they felt was pivotal: an axe-cutting sequence that, according to Elordi, functions as a kind of thesis for the relationship on screen. He described it as one of the first occasions the characters confront absence and the unspoken feelings between them. “It’s the beginning of saying something indirectly,” he said. “What they don’t say sort of punishes them… That scene felt like we had to work to find that push and pull and the sort of subtext of the whole thing. Because that defines their relationship for the rest of the film.”
Robbie echoed the importance of the scene, pointing to how subtext and physicality combine to expose the characters’ emotional rules: extremes of love and pain, without the safety valve of moderation.
How the actors matched energy on set
Robbie emphasized that the film’s emotional volatility was less a technical exercise and more an exchange between the leads. Elordi’s on-set intensity, she said, created space for truthful reactions and sustained momentum in the scenes they shared. The result, the actors suggest, is a relationship that feels lived-in and dangerously magnetic—watchable precisely because it refuses compromise.
Elordi on awards recognition and perspective
Amid the Wuthering Heights press, Elordi is also navigating awards season momentum: he recently received an Academy Award nomination for his work in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. The actor described the experience as “such a treat,” enjoying the communal celebrations that come with recognition while staying tuned to his craft. Robbie playfully teased him about the attention but praised the atmosphere of camaraderie that has accompanied the awards circuit.
Small moments: offbeat questions and hobbies
The interview took a lighter turn when Robbie asked what each actor would collect if they could dedicate an entire room to a hobby. Elordi responded with a surprising choice: “Lizards.” Robbie laughed at the idea and shared that her own home is slowly being claimed by creative pursuits—watercolor painting and sewing have grown into a little studio area of their own. The exchange underscored the actors’ easy rapport and how playfulness offsets the intensity of their onscreen work.
Release details and credits
- Title: Wuthering Heights
- Director: Emerald Fennell
- Lead cast: Margot Robbie (Catherine Earnshaw), Jacob Elordi (Heathcliff)
- Supporting cast: Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, Shazad Latif
- Producers: Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Emerald Fennell, Josey McNamara
- Rating: R
- Runtime: 136 minutes
- Release date: February 13, 2026
Emerald Fennell’s adaptation leans into the raw, uncompromising elements of Brontë’s story while allowing Robbie and Elordi to push the relationship to its most unstable extremes. For audiences curious about love’s capacity to exhilarate and destroy in equal measure, this Wuthering Heights stakes its claim as a provocative, character-driven drama.