Wuthering Heights casting backlash: Casting director defends Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi

• by Arlen Fitzpatrick
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Few books provoke purists like Wuthering Heights. Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation has barely shown its first frames, yet the casting alone has set off a cultural skirmish. With Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, the project’s casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, is now at the center of a debate over accuracy, representation, and how far filmmakers can stretch a classic.

Cochrane, speaking to Deadline, acknowledged what every adapter of Emily Brontë’s novel learns fast: the stakes are emotional, and readers carry fixed images of these characters. She said some English literature fans “are not going to be happy,” then asked people to hold fire until they see the finished film. The criticism has been intense, even ugly. One Instagram comment went as far as saying the “casting director should be shot,” a reminder of how easily discussion slips into harassment—especially when a beloved text is involved.

At the heart of the backlash are two flashpoints. First, Heathcliff’s identity. Brontë describes him as “dark-skinned” and an outsider—terms that have long fueled debates about whether he was of Romani, South Asian, African, or mixed heritage. Elordi, who is white and 27, doesn’t match many readers’ expectations of that description. Second, Catherine’s age. In the novel, she’s 18 when the story’s central tragedy takes shape. Robbie is 34. Those two choices—race and age—have made this adaptation a lightning rod before anyone has seen more than a tease.

The casting debate: race, age, and fidelity to the novel

Heathcliff’s background is one of the most contested parts of Brontë’s book. He’s described as “a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect” and, in some editions and readings, associated with terms like “lascar,” a historical reference to sailors from South Asia and East Africa. That ambiguity once invited white actors to play him as a brooding outsider without addressing race. In recent years, it has led to calls for casting that reflects his likely non-white identity.

Past screen versions show the split. Laurence Olivier played Heathcliff in 1939. Ralph Fiennes took the role in 1992. Tom Hardy did it on television in 2009. Only Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film broke with that tradition in a lasting way, casting Black actors (Solomon Glave and then James Howson) as young and older Heathcliff. For many viewers today, that set a new baseline for representation.

Elordi’s selection has reopened the representation question. Fans who see Heathcliff’s racial otherness as essential view this as erasing that element. Those more open to interpretive freedom counter that adaptation is a creative act, not a line-by-line translation. Cochrane leans toward the latter. “You really don’t need to be accurate,” she told Deadline—an honest admission that’s also gasoline on a fire when the source text carries centuries of meaning.

Then there’s Catherine. Casting an actor in her 30s to play a teenager will always draw side-eye, but there are practical reasons productions do it. Films avoid the legal and logistical constraints of working with minors; they also often need performers comfortable with intense material. Brontë’s story is cruel and obsessive. Shooting those scenes with an adult can be easier on set and easier on insurance. Many adaptations average ages up for those reasons. There’s also a narrative wrinkle: films often compress time so that Catherine can appear at 18 and later, and one actor handles both.

Age accuracy, to be fair, is rarely consistent in film. Amy Adams played a character 15 years younger in Sharp Objects through careful styling. Tom Holland, well into his 20s, played a high schooler as Spider-Man. It’s not unique to this project. What makes it stickier here is that fans already feel the book’s texture—Yorkshire moors, feverish love, social class, rawness—demands a true-to-text approach across the board.

The spark that lit the current wave of outrage was a steamy teaser that prioritized chemistry and sensuality. For some, that marketing choice undercuts the book’s brutality by romanticizing a relationship that’s possessive and often violent. For others, it’s the point: Fennell has built a reputation on glossy surfaces that hide darker critiques, as seen in Promising Young Woman and Saltburn.

Representation is not the only pressure point. The language around the debate has gotten extreme. The violent social media comment Cochrane referenced is part of a pattern the industry knows too well: casting disputes escalating into harassment. Platforms have policies against threats; productions increasingly coordinate with security and PR teams when online debate spills into real life. None of that changes the creative call, but it shapes the environment these films are made in.

What this adaptation could change—and what to watch for

Adaptation fights usually boil down to the same questions. What is essential to the book? What’s fair game to modernize? And when does reinvention become erasure? Wuthering Heights invites hard answers because it’s not a polite romance; it’s a story about obsession, class, and people hurting each other. If the film keeps that edge, some choices may read differently in context than they do on a casting sheet.

Here are the pressure points that will decide how this lands:

• Heathcliff’s origin: Does the film address his outsider status as racialized in 19th-century England, or reframe him as an outsider purely by class and temperament? The script’s treatment—not just the actor’s look—will answer the whitewashing charge.
• Catherine’s age and arc: If the story compresses time or stylizes youth, does it feel honest? Audiences accept older actors as teens when the tone fits. If it feels cosmetic, it’ll clang.
• Power dynamics: The book is harsh about control and cruelty. If the film leans too far into sweeping romance, fans will say it blunts Brontë. If it keeps the violence and moral mess, the casting may matter less than the performances.
• Sense of place: The moors are a character. Authentic locations, dialect choices, and weathered textures do more to honor the text than strict literalism in other areas.
• Performance chemistry: Robbie is a box-office force. Elordi’s profile rose with Euphoria, Priscilla, and Saltburn. If their work captures Catherine and Heathcliff’s jagged push-pull, some viewers will forgive departures elsewhere.

Industry logic also plays a role. A-listers unlock financing, global distribution, and marketing muscle. That doesn’t satisfy readers who want faithful embodiment, but it explains why a project like this reaches the starting line with starry names. The teaser’s heat, however polarizing, suggests the team knows the audience it’s courting.

It’s also worth remembering: Wuthering Heights is public domain, which is why it keeps getting reimagined. Each version ends up reflecting the moment it’s made in. The 1939 film turned the story into high romance. The 2011 film made race explicit. A 2020s version—made after years of debate over casting, representation, and power—will be judged by how it engages those issues, not whether it ducks them.

Cochrane’s invitation to “wait and see” is more than PR spin. Editing choices, sound design, and camera movement can radically change what we think a performance is saying. A shot that frames Heathcliff as surveilling rather than adoring transforms the scene. A costume that signals Catherine’s entrapment rather than allure shifts the meaning of a kiss. The audience doesn’t get those cues from a casting announcement.

None of this erases the discomfort some feel about casting Elordi as a character long read as a man of color. That reaction is grounded in a real, documented pattern across film history. When marginalized identities are treated as optional flavor, people speak up. It’s healthy that they do. The film now carries the burden of proof to show it isn’t flattening Heathcliff into a generic brooding lead.

Likewise, the age question will hinge on execution. If Robbie’s Catherine is vivid, volatile, and caught in a young person’s bad bargain between desire and status, viewers may accept the choice. If the film relies on soft lighting and schoolgirl costumes, it will look like a shortcut.

For now, the production has the audience’s attention—wanted or not. The conversation is already bigger than a trailer. It’s about who gets to embody literature’s most famous outsiders, how we read signals of race and class on screen, and how much liberty artists should take with beloved texts. The answers will arrive in two acts: on screen, and in the reaction after the credits roll.