Responses have not been entirely favorable to the casting of Australian actors Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi to lead Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights. "There was one Instagram comment that said the casting director should be shot," said casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, at a film festival over the weekend, per Deadline. Fans of Emily Brontë's classic novel, set in the late 1700s in rural Yorkshire, have criticized the ages of the actors—Robbie is 34, Elordi is 27—considering that their characters, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, an orphan fostered by Catherine's father, are in their early 20s for much of the novel, per the Guardian. They've also pointed out that Heathcliff is described as having dark skin, while Elordi (Saltburn, Priscilla) is white.
The criticism doesn't concern Cochrane, whose mother is Indian and father is Dominican. "It's just a book. That is not based on real life. It's all art," she told Deadline. "There's definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy," she added, noting the set design is "even more shocking." But "you can read anything into a book and make it your interpretation," she went on, per Metro. "And it's really easy to sit online and say things, but just wait until you've watched it, and then you can say—maybe not that I deserve to be shot—but you can say what you want!" Adolescence star Owen Cooper will play a young Heathcliff in the film, produced by Robbie's LuckyChap company, Metro reports. The film is expected to be released next Valentine's Day. (More movies stories.)
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