Margot Robbie and Alison Oliver are abuzz at the end of their second day of press in London – not as they’re fronting one of the most anticipated films of the year, or in excitement for the premiere this evening – but as it clicks that Chloe Burrows from Love Island just interviewed them. Celebrities, they’re just like us.
Ever since it was announced that Saltburn’s Emerald Fennell would reimagine Emily Brontë’s tempestuous gothic novel as an erotically symbolic epic romance akin to Romeo & Juliet, there has been contentious social discourse about the casting choices, costumes and historical accuracy.
Sat before me, Robbie is worlds away from the wind-beaten heroine, who flits between moods of malice and benevolence as swiftly as the weather changes on the desolate moors. Her petulant unpredictability makes for a tumultuous relationship with her childhood friend or lifelong ‘pet’ Heathcliff, especially when she marries a much wealthier man, Edgar Linton, who moves into the big house next door.
“Playing Cathy, it was a dream,” Robbie says, “It’s really fun to play such a brat. She’s unlikable in such obvious ways, then somehow, at the end of it all, I still love her. I think you love her because you can see how much Heathcliff loves her, too, and Edgar as well.
“She’s loved by people, and she’s so awful to everyone, but she’s repressing a deep love herself. It’s hard for me not to be on her side, even though I do see the recreational cruelty that she inflicts on a daily basis.”
This is Robbie’s third collaboration with the Promising Young Woman director, having served as a producer on all three of her films, but her first time in front of the camera. While Oliver starred in Fennell’s darkly disturbing tale of obsession and aristocracy, Saltburn, as another bleach-blonde brat, Venetia.
“When I first met Emerald, she had been speaking about Wuthering Heights and I knew that it was a story that meant so much to her,” Oliver says, “I was just so excited that she was going tell her version of it because this book means so much to so many people.”
Fennell has described “Wuthering Heights” as an embodiment of her 14-year-old self’s interpretation of the book, and all the feelings it stirred in the heightened age of puberty, when it’s impossible to even begin to process the surge of simultaneous new emotions.
“I think what's so enduring and so fascinating about [Wuthering Heights] is everyone comes away from reading it and having their own opinions or connections to it,” Oliver continues, “and just knowing that she was going to do her version, which as a filmmaker, she has such a unique point of view and vision, I was just so excited that we were going to get that and then to get to be a part of it. It was just such a treat.”
For the most part, Oliver and Robbie’s characters sit on polar opposite sides of this story. Cathy is a wild, savage soul, torn between a superficial, stable love with Edgar and the achingly destructive obsession with Heathcliff. Cathy becomes Isabella’s doll-like lifeline to a life outside her sheltered existence. Not so much a friend for her, but someone for Isabella to subject to her every sinisterly innocent whim.
No one’s relationship is more captivating than Cathy and Heathcliff’s, though, which has spawned into a parasocial fixation with Elordi and Robbie’s off-screen relationship. Rumours of Elordi sending Robbie roses on Valentine’s Day from Heathcliff only fuelled the narrative of their co-dependency on-set as the actress admitted to feeling “lost without him like a kid without their blanket.”
“Unfortunately, that whole co-dependency thing has been really taken out of context and blown way up,” she confesses, “What I was saying was we had a really fun time, all of us working on this film, and I really love making movies and when I get to make them with really cool people that you become friends with, it's really sad when the job ends.”
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Margot Robbie is no stranger to exploring dysfunctional attachments onscreen, as they appears in many of her films. from Birds of Prey to I, Tonya as well as “Wuthering Heights”.
“It’s something I actually did research a lot back in the day,” she explains, “I think those dynamics on screen make for great traumas, don't they? So inherently, there's something toxic or dangerous about that dynamic, too. Certainly, for Cathy and Heathcliff, their love does, when unrequited, mutate into something destructive that ends up hurting a lot of the characters around them.”
Oliver had a different challenge entirely. Isabella is sidelined in the novel, sitting in the shadow of her male counterparts – her brother, Edgar and later her reluctant husband, Heathcliff. In spite of this, Isabella is a rich contrast to Cathy, embodying a girl-like vulnerability, draped in ribbons, pure white gowns and obsessing over the only romantic love she’s even known, from her books.
“I think what Emerald has done such an amazing job of… with all the characters, she really went to each part and went, ‘what is it that I find interesting and unique about this person? And then how do I really bring that to life in my screenplay?’
“I think there were parts of Isabella that she really took from the book that she found really interesting about her or endearing or that she loved, and then she really just went all in on it. I think just the characterisation of her, the person that leaps off the page and that I got to embody, I think I just hope that people connect to the character. She goes on such a journey. By the time the film ends, she's in such a different place to where she begins.”
As much as this isn’t the Wuthering Heights that literary purists love, and yes, there’s enough erotic symbolism to make poor Brontë blush, there’s also an immense pressure to speak new life into such well-quoted words.
“The biggest challenge was probably saying some really iconic lines from the original book, knowing the pressure of doing your ‘to be or not to be speech’ is like, ‘oh, okay, these lines have been said by brilliant people before, and they'll continue being said by brilliant people,” Robbie says. “These words are alive to so many people who love the book and now I've got to say them and make it sound like it's just occurring to me in this moment.”
As much as the film focuses on the ever-deepening decay of Cathy and Heathcliff’s two souls, Oliver and Robbie also get to explore the ever-souring dynamic of their sisterly-like on-screen relationship that becomes more violent and demented as the twisted games go on. Cathy’s child-like possessiveness won’t allow someone as beautifully (and perhaps enticingly pure) as Isabella to play with her favourite toy, Heathcliff.
“Finding our dynamic was so fun because they have such a bizarre relationship that then takes this turn,” Margot adds, “Then I've got this amazing dynamic with Hong's character, Nelly, in that they've grown up like sisters, and then they're so often at odds. Honestly, I think she probably inflicts the most hurtful things towards Nelly.”
One of the biggest additions to the plot is the passionate, intimate scenes, none of which appear in the book. The palpable sexual tension climaxes in a frenzied montage of Heathcliff and Cathy’s devouring each other, anywhere and everywhere they can, often shrouded by the privacy of the expansive landscape.
“I think with any intimate scenes, they're just about how is this driving the story along and how is this helping the narrative?” Oliver says, “In the book, Cathy and Heathcliff don't even kiss, I don't think. That was a new thing, for you guys to explore what their intimate nature would even be. But we had an amazing intimacy coach, and it was just a lot of discussions about what story we were trying to tell with those moments.”
The need for intimacy coordinators still remains an industry-wide debate, as some actors declare that they don’t need them – such as Jennifer Lawrence, who said she felt ‘safe’ with Robert Pattison in Die My Love – while others feel it’s a chance to establish more protections for women’s privacy and safety on set. Something which Fennell was very passionate about when crafting the atmosphere on “Wuthering Heights.”
“An added element that helped is that Emerald was an actor herself as well,” Robbie says, “So when you're on her set, there's a different level of empathy she has for you in any scene that you're shooting because she's been in that position herself, and that makes a real difference as well.”
Oliver admits that Fennell’s sensitive approach to those more feral scenes – such as Isabella being choked down by Heathcliff on a table, or chained up by the neck and told to beg on all-fours like a dog – really ‘impressed’ her.
“What used to blow me away – sorry, that's an intense thing – but what used to just really impress me about Emerald was that even if there was a scene where you were flirting or suggestive, she would close the set,” Oliver continues.
“She's so sensitive to that because she's been in that position. It just means so much as an actor when you're in those moments yourself, and you're trying to find your way through. She's so on your side and so looking after you.”
Whether you’re sceptical or sold by the “Wuthering Heights” mania, one thing’s for sure – it’s the sexiest sad film you’ll see all year. Take your tissues, prepare to be undone, as the deliciously decadent display befalls you all to the striking soundtrack from Charli XCX, if you dare to be wuthered.
“Wuthering Heights” is in cinemas now.
Margot Robbie’s version of Cathy is basically a period-crossing fashion Pinterest board.
