Margot Robbie Defends Jacob Elordi’s Wuthering Heights Casting

Margot Robbie is coming to her Wuthering Heights costar Jacob Elordi’s defense amid criticism surrounding his casting.

“I saw him play Heathcliff. And he is Heathcliff,” Robbie, 35, shared in an interview with British Vogue published on Thursday, December 4. “I’d say, just wait. Trust me, you’ll be happy.”

The 2026 rendition of Wuthering Heights, based on the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë and directed by Emerald Fennell, follows the intense and tumultuous love story between Heathcliff (Elordi) and Catherine Earnshaw (Robbie).

The Barbie actress went on to say that the role of Heathcliff has a “lineage of other great actors who’ve played him,” including Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Ralph Fiennes and Tom Hardy. James Howson, a man of color, was last to play the part in the 2011 adaptation.

“To be a part of that is special,” she explained. “He’s incredible and I believe in him so much. I honestly think he’s our generation’s Daniel Day-Lewis.”

Following the announcement that Robbie and Elordi would be taking on the roles of Catherine and Heathcliff, several fans and scholars of the novel criticized the casting decision. Critics argued that Elordi, 28, as Heathcliff is an example of whitewashing because he is described as “dark-skinned” in the book.

“I love that they’re making a new Wuthering Heights film, it’s my favorite book,” one user wrote via X in September 2024. “Casting two white people as Cathy and Heathcliff is uh … Why is this the third movie to cast a white dude as a person of color in an interracial relationship where he’s demonized …?”

Another user wrote via X, “Why would you accept the role of a character when you’re white? You could’ve easily said no. I need an explanation…”

Fennell, 40, who also worked with Elordi on Saltburn, responded shortly after the backlash went viral, noting that she wanted the actor for Wuthering Heights because he “looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read.”

“And it was so awful because I so wanted to scream. Not the professional thing to do, obviously,” she joked while speaking at the Bronte Women’s Writing Festival in September, according to Variety. “I had been thinking about making [Wuthering Heights], and it seemed to me he had the thing… He’s a very surprising actor.”

Fennell added that she believes her movie is faithful to the book.

“I wanted to make something that made me feel like I felt when I first read it, which means that it’s an emotional response to something,” she explained. “It’s, like, primal, sexual.”

While Elordi has not discussed the criticism around his casting directly, he did note that he feels Fennell did a “perfect” job with the story.

“I think what [Fennell] has done is really perfect and super beautiful,” he shared in a September interview with WSJ. Magazine. “It’s electric. And it’s also like nails on a chalkboard. It does something. It moves you in some kind of way, good or bad, but it will move you.”

Robbie agreed with Elordi while speaking with British Vogue, adding that when she first read the script for Wuthering Heights it “absolutely wrecked” her.

“I didn’t know what was coming. By the end, I was just so full and so destroyed at the same time,” she explained, sharing that she was very drawn to Fennell’s version of Catherine. “I just felt like … Not like she’s mine, but like I both understood her and didn’t, in a way that drew me to her. It’s this puzzle you have to work out.”

Robbie explained that she knows everyone is “expecting” the film to be “very, very raunchy” but thinks “people will be surprised.”

“Not to say there aren’t sexual elements and that it’s not provocative — it definitely is provocative — but it’s more romantic than provocative,” she told the outlet. “This is a big epic romance. It’s just been so long since we’ve had one — maybe The Notebook, also The English Patient. You have to go back decades. It’s that feeling when your chest swells or it’s like someone’s punched you in the guts and the air leaves your body.”

Wuthering Heights hits theaters on February 13, 2026.