Yesterday, Deadline reported that Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are set to star as Cathy and Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. The story, if you’re unfamiliar, centres around the passionate but doomed love between Catherine Earnshaw and her father’s foster son Heathcliff, set against the backdrop of the inhospitable West Yorkshire moors.
The Saltburn director Fennell first teased the project on X back in July, posting an illustration reading “Wuthering Heights, a film by Emerald Fennell” featuring a tagline borrowed from the original novel: “be with me always, take any form, drive me mad”.
The news about Robbie and Elordi’s casting has drawn criticism, with many on social media arguing that Elordi in particular has been miscast. Notably, in the novel, it’s implied that Heathcliff is not white; he is described as a “dark-skinned gipsy” and “a little Lascar”, a 19th-century term for Indian sailors. “Did anyone actually read the book before deciding this?” wrote the Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey on X.
Some might argue that ‘colour-blind’ casting, where race isn’t considered during the casting process, is progressive. It’s certainly a practice that has become increasingly common both on stage and on screen in recent years, and has arguably opened up more opportunities for non-white actors: most recently, Black British actress Francesca Amewudah-Rivers starred as Juliet in Jamie Lloyd’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragic love story Romeo and Juliet, while Ambika Mod, a British actress of Indian descent, portrayed Emma Morley in the Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ novel One Day.
But colour-blind casting is only progressive if it is helping create opportunities for actors of colour. It’s no secret that Black, Asian and mixed-race actors are seldom offered lead roles or afforded the chance to play rounded, three-dimensional characters (especially in period dramas). Speaking to the Telegraph in 2018, Mod expressed her frustration with the stereotypical, “meek, supporting roles” usually offered to Asian actresses like herself: “Doctors, lawyers and policewomen [...] There’s still a long way to go.” With this in mind, it’s maddening that Elordi has been cast as Heathcliff – a complex, well-rounded lead character explicitly referred to as “dark-skinned” in Brontë’s original text.
It’s especially frustrating given that Heathcliff’s race is also integral to his characterisation: as a boy he is repeatedly subject to racist abuse, with various characters describing him as a “dog”, “dirty” and a “slave boy”; these formative experiences of racism shape Heathcliff into the cruel, aggressive, traumatised man he becomes. When he flees the moors partway through the novel, he’s hell-bent on amassing wealth in order to woo Cathy – but his insecurity about being perceived as racially ‘impure’ also fuels his dogged pursuit of status. Ultimately, Heathcliff’s saturnine temperament and Cathy’s reluctance to marry him just don’t hit home as powerfully if he isn’t portrayed as a racialised character.
Granted, Fennell is not the first person to cast a white actor as Heathcliff – Andrea Arnold remains the only director to have ever cast a Black actor, James Howson, in the role. But do we really need another white Heathcliff in 2024, when the likes of Dev Patel, Regé-Jean Page, and Riz Ahmed are available? I’m not convinced.