“It’s just a book”: Casting chief defends Robbie–Elordi choice as Wuthering Heights row grows
“It’s just a book.” With that five-word shrug, casting director Kharmel Cochrane poured fuel on an already roaring internet fire over Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Speaking at the Sands Film Festival in Scotland, Cochrane defended the decision to cast Australian stars Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, pushing back at weeks of fan anger and charges of whitewashing.
The production has been under scrutiny since the September 2024 announcement. Critics argued that Brontë’s text signals Heathcliff as an outsider who may be of Roma or other non‑white heritage, with his “dark” features repeatedly noted in the novel. Casting Elordi, a white actor best known for Euphoria and Saltburn, struck many as a missed chance to reflect that ambiguity on screen. The outrage grew louder in March 2025 when paparazzi photos from set landed online.
Those photos triggered a second front in the culture war: costumes. Robbie’s wedding look — off‑the‑shoulder neckline, puffed sleeves, corset bodice, and a glittering ball skirt — drew howls for feeling “1980s Cinderella,” not late 18th‑century Yorkshire. Fashion historians would point out that white wedding gowns didn’t become a trend until Queen Victoria in 1840, decades after Catherine’s timeline. The silhouette also reads more fantasy than Georgian. For purists, that dress became Exhibit A for what they see as a project straying from the book’s bones.
Fennell, an Oscar winner for Promising Young Woman and a lightning rod after Saltburn, isn’t hiding her intentions. The project reportedly sparked a bidding war in 2024 and has been pitched as an “erotic interpretation,” a phrase that alone could split a room. The first teaser stamps its mood with a blunt tag — “drive me mad” — and early viewers have called the cut “aggressively provocative” and “tonally abrasive.” Intimate scenes shown in the teaser suggest a bolder, more sensorial reading than most previous versions.
Elordi, now a fixture of global red carpets, has leaned into the film’s ambition. “The performances from everyone — it’s breathtaking. It’s an incredible romance. It’s a true epic. It’s visually beautiful. The script is beautiful. The costumes are incredible,” he said in a recent interview, framing the project as a prestige play rather than a sacrilege. Robbie has stayed mostly quiet publicly, letting the marketing beat speak for itself.
Cochrane’s comment — “it’s just a book” — landed like a slap for many readers who see Brontë’s novel as sacred ground. Fans took to social platforms to call the phrase dismissive of the text’s historical context and its thorny take on race, class, and cruelty. For others, that same line sounded like a reasonable defense of artistic license. This is the tension around Fennell’s film: is it a fresh vision or another star‑driven project flattening the parts that make the story jagged and strange?
It’s not the first time Heathcliff’s identity has been a flashpoint. The character’s origins are famously opaque — an orphan found on the streets of Liverpool and dragged into the Earnshaw home, with skin and hair described in a way that marks him as “other.” Over the decades, the role has swung from classical matinee idol to deliberate rupture with tradition. Laurence Olivier played Heathcliff in 1939. Ralph Fiennes took the part opposite Juliette Binoche in 1992. Tom Hardy embodied him for ITV in 2009. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film made a pointed choice: casting Black actors (Solomon Glave and later James Howson) to underline Heathcliff’s outsider status. Every version chooses a lane, and each lane draws fire from a different camp.
What makes Fennell’s effort uniquely combustible is the combination of star power and tone. Robbie, coming off the global shockwave of Barbie, and Elordi, who turned Saltburn and Priscilla into breakout moments, guarantee attention. Fennell’s taste for provocation guarantees debate. Put those together and you don’t just get a period romance; you get a referendum on how far filmmakers can bend the classics before they snap.
The costume skirmish is part aesthetic, part politics. Anachronism has become a mainstream tool in period storytelling — think Sofia Coppola’s candy‑colored Marie Antoinette or Bridgerton’s knowingly modern palette in music and wardrobe. Those choices can invite new audiences in, but they also risk erasing the social codes that shaped characters’ choices. Catherine’s marriage isn’t a ballgown fantasy; it’s a trap sprung by class anxiety and a desire for status. When a dress reads like prom night, critics worry the story loses teeth.
The bigger argument — the one ricocheting through film Twitter and book forums — is representation. Fans who see Heathcliff as a character of color frame this as a textbook example of opportunity lost. They argue that casting a white actor where the text allows for a non‑white identity isn’t neutral; it’s a decision with real‑world consequences for actors trying to break into leading roles. Supporters of the film push back: Elordi is a bankable lead, the role’s ethnicity isn’t explicit, and translation to screen always involves hard choices.
These debates mirror a decade‑long shift in period drama. Projects like Bridgerton and The Personal History of David Copperfield used color‑conscious casting to reset audience assumptions about who can occupy the past on screen. Others leaned into mood over museum accuracy. The wins and misfires of that wave have set the stage for Fennell’s gambit: audiences now expect a clear rationale when a production swerves from the text, whether that’s to deepen theme or simply to chase style.
Then there’s the novel’s own reputation. When it arrived in 1847, critics balked at its violence and its refusal to polish any of its lovers’ worst impulses. Over time, readers turned it into a cultural totem — a romance wrapped around revenge and cruelty, with weather as a character and class as a cage. Every adaptation tries to solve the same puzzle: how to keep the book’s storm while making a movie that moves. Some versions tidy the plot. Others go feral. Fennell appears to be choosing the latter.
Industry logic also looms over the argument. Packaging two global stars with a buzzy filmmaker makes financiers comfortable. It also shapes a film’s look and feel. Studios want international appeal on Valentine’s Day 2026 — a release date handpicked to sell intensity as romance. That framing alone is provocative. Brontë’s lovers aren’t hearts‑and‑flowers. They’re magnets and knives. The marketing will either lean into the pain or sand it down. The teaser suggests the former.
Costume chatter isn’t going away. The off‑the‑shoulder neckline and glittering skirt that drew scorn speak to Fennell’s taste for heightened glamour. Supporters see a director making emotional truth louder than historical minutiae; detractors see cosplay. It’s the same fault line that split viewers of Saltburn: the question of whether style sharpens meaning or suffocates it.
Cochrane’s role in the controversy is unusual for a casting director, a job that usually operates out of the spotlight. Her blunt line has become a rallying point for both sides. Those defending the production say creative teams need room to reinterpret classics without being dragged for every departure. Those opposed say the comment shrugs off decades of readers’ attachment and sidesteps a serious conversation about representation.
There’s also the Northern setting to consider. The moors in Brontë’s book aren’t wallpaper — they’re a pressure system. Filmmakers who get the landscape right often find a shortcut into the characters’ psychology. The paparazzi shots hint at a larger‑than‑life visual plan, with windswept vistas and stylized wardrobe. If the film delivers on that scale, the debate may shift from casting to execution: do we feel the place, or are we watching a slick version of storms behind glass?
Past screen versions are instructive. The 1992 film leaned classical and romantic; Arnold’s 2011 take stripped the story down to mud, wind, and raw feeling; TV iterations have tilted toward melodrama. Every one of them has run into the same split reaction that greeted the book. Viewers who want tender tragedy often bristle at Heathcliff’s brutality; viewers who want a howl of pain grow bored by neat plotting. Fennell’s teaser suggests she prefers the howl.
For all the noise, little is actually known about the final cut beyond the teaser’s tone, the leads, and that Valentine’s Day 2026 slot. That vacuum of detail is fueling speculation. Is the script leaning heavily into sexuality? How far will the film stray from the novel’s structure? Will the timeline be compressed? None of those answers are public yet, which leaves the casting fight as the main event until the next trailer lands.
One practical effect of the backlash is unavoidable: audiences now enter this film with an argument already loaded. That can hurt a movie, but it can also make it must‑see. Fennell has played that game before. Promising Young Woman divided viewers and then won big on awards night. Saltburn split rooms and stayed in headlines for weeks. She’s comfortable riding the storm.
The stakes for representation are different, though. If the film wins over skeptics, it will be because the storytelling justifies its choices and the performances cut through. If it doesn’t, the criticism will likely land harder than usual. Fans and scholars have been pressing for richer, more expansive casting in period dramas. A high‑profile reversal, in their view, isn’t just another creative choice — it’s a message to the industry about whose faces get to carry literary history.
For now, the conversation keeps looping back to that five‑word line: “it’s just a book.” To people who love this text, it’s never been “just a book.” To artists making new work, it can’t be a museum piece either. That tension — between reverence and reinvention — is exactly where this adaptation sits, daring people to pick a side months before a single review appears.
What this fight says about our adaptations — and why the release timing matters
The controversy reveals a clear shift in how we argue about the classics. Twenty years ago, the main question was fidelity: did the film include key scenes and period detail? Today, the first question is often whose perspective is centered. That’s progress, even when it’s messy. It forces production teams to articulate not just how they adapt a story, but why.
Marketing will frame that “why.” A Valentine’s Day 2026 release sells passion. The studio likely wants couples, not just English lit majors. That means trailers cut to heat and heartbreak, posters that foreground the lovers, and a campaign built around star wattage. The more the film markets itself as a grand romance, the more critics will ask whether it keeps the novel’s darker heart beating under the velvet.
Robbie’s presence guarantees crossover interest. She can play brittle charm and flinty resolve, traits that map cleanly onto Catherine. Elordi brings size and a coiled physicality that can read as threat or devotion depending on the light. On paper, that chemistry could be electric. On screen, it needs a director who can balance desire and dread without tipping into parody. That’s the tightrope Fennell seems ready to walk.
Expect the next wave of conversation to shift from “should they have done this?” to “did they pull it off?” That pivot will come with a full trailer, a rating, and the first festival screenings. Until then, the argument lives on social media and in snapshots from a windy set — a modern way of fighting about a 19th‑century fever dream that never really cooled down.