Wuthering Heights’ Margot Robbie Says Cathy & Isabella Fighting Over Heathcliff Was “Radical”

There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to Wuthering Heights. I’m sure we’ll be dissecting and debating it for weeks. From the whitewashing controversy to the toxic love to the daring costumes, the discourse is going to be discoursing. This film, like most everything Emerald Fennell touches, is going to be divisive. And I think that’s part of its charm and its weakness. As The Ringer put it, Wuthering Heights may be “the hate-watch event of the year.” Except, I didn’t hate it. 

I may be one of the few people that don’t think this Heathcliff should have been anything but the white fantasy Fennell envisioned (let her make the revitionist movie she wants; we should be championing artists of color to create their wildest desires onscreen and pushing Hollywood execs to greenlight them instead), and this may be strange to admit, considering the movie is based on one of the most toxic relationships in literature, but as soon as Cathy and Heathcliff grew into Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and they gave us some of the most blistering and intoxicating chemistry I’ve seen onscreen in awhile, I started to enjoy myself. I couldn't look away.

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is a gothic, depressing tragedy of love, lust, loss, and self destruction and yet, it’s also kind of fun (until it’s not, no spoilers). Aside from the absurdity and campiness of the costumes, one of the things I enjoyed most was how unhinged, horny, and mean Cathy could be. And how weird and complicated Alison Oliver’s Isabella Linton was. As Robbie put it, Cathy is “such a bitch.” You can say a lot about Fennell, but she can write female rage (see: Promising Young Woman) and here, she sets her sights on female desire. 

Late last month, the day after I’d seen Wuthering Heights for the first time, I talked to Robbie and Oliver at the film’s fantastical press junket (it was held at The Doheny Estate at the Greystone Mansion and Gardens and there were Wuthering Heights-themed installations throughout the historic grounds) about their characters’ surprisingly refreshinging agency, that much-discussed Robbie-Elordi chemistry, and which costumes shocked them the most.

Margot Robbie: Do you know what felt radical? We have a scene — Alison and I — on the swing in the garden, and it's a scene essentially, where we're just fight over Heathcliff, and it felt so radical to do a scene like that. The ironic thing is that we've fought so hard to not have to do that in movies anymore, but now it's been so long since — I don't know if I've done a scene like this since I was on the soap opera I was on back in Australia when I was a teenager. It felt so radical to just be two women fighting over a man. It was crazy. “You have him. He's so handsome. Who you talking about? You could never take him!” It was weirdly exciting to do.

Alison Oliver: Yeah, it was strange. All of these characters do have — I feel like Emerald really gave them agency in their own ways as well, which within the sort of confines or the period, you do feel like they have agency in some sense. And I think that was important to show. 

MR: Yeah, they all make the choices. And then everything you see in the movie happens because of the choices they make. Whereas usually, even now, when we're not doing scenes fighting about men, most of the time, you're usually playing a character that something happens to, and then you watch a movie about the effects of that thing happening to that female character. 

AO: They are the decider.

MR: For both of our characters, I feel like we make a choice, we do a thing, and it's not the right thing in most instances, and then we have to deal with the consequences.

MR: Yes! Chemistry and charisma are two things that I'm like, why can't we have that? That's what I want in the movies. Charismatic characters or I want insane chemistry,

Was there a moment where you and Jacob were like, Oh, we got it?

MR: There were a couple of moments. Even on day one. [We shot] the first scene in the movie where Cathy flings open the bed hangings, and [Heathcliff is] lying in bed. And then we ended up cutting this bit but I walked up over him, and then crouch down and got like this close to his face and told him to, “get up, we've got neighbors,” or whatever it was. And we cut that bit because the proximity is something we wanted to save. But, I mean, that was day one, and even then, everyone was kind of like, “Whoa.” And we were like, “Okay, I think this movie's gonna work.” Also just because she's throwing something at him, and he's throwing it back, and he's like, “What?” There was already an intensity between them that I think we could build on from that point. 

AO: Incredible. I kept feeling like I was watching, like an old Hollywood film, like watching Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. It really was so incredible to see the two of them just inhabit those characters. It was really special.

AO: We had so many costume changes. Every time, in me and Margot’s rooms — we were next to each other and they put us both in our rooms — it would probably take like, half an hour to get into the outfit, and then we'd both come out of the room at the same time and do a reveal. I never felt like more of a girl in my life. I’d come out and be like, Ah!! [mimics screaming]!! 

MR: You couldn't control that reaction if you wanted to. And I didn't want to, but I couldn't even if I had wanted to. It was so fun.

AO: [to Margot] Did you have a favorite? 

MR: I think my favorite was on the swing. That costume during the swing scene [was my favorite]. It's got this black velvet bodice, and this like and this like neck thing, and then this bit's showing, but then it's like, got this chainwork in pink rose. We replicated these old couple of paintings of women in that outfit. One woman wore it, got painted in it, and then someone else was like, Well, I want that. And then did it as well. I think there's three different decades apart where they've done this. I was like, wow, that lady was the original Kardashian. Like, did she wear something and everyone was like, “I want to wear what she wore!” 

AO: There’s this shot where Margot is on the swing, and then I think Isabella says something, and [Cathy] twists around. And every time [she] did that, I literally was like, “that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.” And I would break  character and be like [gasps].

MR: She's such a bitch, and then swings back around [laughs].

Wuthering Heights is in theaters now.