Warner Bros.
It seems that the production ofEmerald Fennell's new adaptation ofWuthering Heightsmight have been haunted — not by the dead, but by the living.
StarJacob Elordi, who plays brooding antihero Heathcliff in the sumptuous take on the romantic classic, recently opened up about a freak accident that landed him in the hospital during the course of shooting, and the otherworldly implications it may raise.
"Something peculiar that happened while we were filming was when [Siân Miller], the make-up artist, was designing the scars from the whips for Heathcliff's back," Elordi recalled to Fennell, his director, in aconversation published byEsquire UK. "She challenged me: 'If Daniel Day-Lewis was playing Heathcliff, he would have come in with scars.' I said, 'Well I'm going to go away and maim myself on the weekend to prove to you that I'm Heathcliff!'"
Joking or not, back scars were exactly what was in store for Elordi.
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The 28-year-oldEuphoriabreakout explained that because of the sheer volume of makeup he had to wear as the monster in his previous film, Guillermo del Toro'sFrankenstein, he resolved to "clean my feet properly every night" after rolling around in "mange and dirt" each day onWuthering Heights.
While sitting in a steam shower scrubbing his feet, Elordi said he "leant back and my back seared into the steam knob and I stood up screaming; it tore up my back. When I went to work on Monday I had a second-degree burn."
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Fennell, who previously directed Elordi inSaltburn, recalled getting a text from aWuthering Heightsproducer saying her leading man had been sent to the hospital. "Oh my god, he's had a car accident," she first thought. She went on to ask Elordi if he attributes the injury to "the spirit of Daniel Day-Lewis."
"It was actual Daniel Day-Lewis. In the shower," he quipped, adding that he "did feel something spiritual when we got to the Moors for the first time."
Wuthering Heightsis based on the 1847 novel of the same name by Emily Brontë. The story concerns a pair of landowning families from the West Yorkshire moors, the Lintons and the Earnshaws, and the enigmatic, compelling, and racially ambiguous foster child named Heathcliff who comes into and transforms their lives.
The novel has been adapted numerous times before, with Heathcliff being played by actors including Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, and Ralph Fiennes, and his romantic opposite Catherine being played by Juliette Binoche, Kaya Scodelario, and in Fennell's version, Margot Robbie.
The fact that Brontë's text makes numerous references to Heathcliff's unknown but likely nonwhite provenance has made Elordi's casting controversial. Andrea Arnold's 2011 adaptation starring Scodelario, by contrast, cast Black actors Solomon Glave and James Howson as Heathcliff (in younger and older incarnations).
Robbieaddressed those concernsin December, saying that fans have "nothing else to go off" until they're able to actually see the film. But she defended Elordi's performance by saying, "I saw him play Heathcliff, and he is Heathcliff… I'd say, just wait. Trust me, you'll be happy."
Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly
