Admittedly, casting the film version of one of the world’s best known novels can’t be an easy task.
So when the cast of Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming take on Wuthering Heights was revealed earlier this week, it was always going to be a hot topic of discussion – and almost immediately, people made their criticisms clear.
The protagonists, doomed lovers Catherine ‘Cathy’ Earnshaw and Heathcliff, will be played by Barbiestar Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, who is known for playing attractive but unreachable love interests in Saltburn and Euphoria, as well as Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s 2023 biopic, Priscilla.
There’s no doubt that they both have serious acting chops, but many would-be fans have pushed back against their inclusion in the film.
For some, Robbie and Elordi’s A-list, 2020s sheen is too different to the gritty Victorian characters Brontë wrote – as one commenter on social media puts it, these are ‘faces that have seen iPhones’.
However, the majority of the criticism over this casting has been reserved for the choice to cast Elordi, a white man, as Heathcliff – a famously non-white character.
And to me, the pushback is valid – even a cursory search on Google will point to Brontë’s Heathcliff being a person of colour, so why is he being represented by a white actor?
Brontë repeatedly referred to Heathcliff’s dark complexion and ‘otherness’ throughout the novel.
On one page, Heathcliff is described as a ‘dark-skinned gipsy in aspect’, while another refers to his ‘dusky fingers’. Characters debate his appearances to be of a ‘Lascar’ – a dated description meaning a sailor from India or Southeast Asia – or ‘an American or Spanish castaway’.
While the intricacies of Heathcliff’s ethnicity are still debated, his difference to the starkly white society he entered as a young child was clear.
And yet – most Wuthering Heights interpretations since the early 20th century have cast white men as the central anti-hero, with previous depictions coming courtesy of Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Timothy Dalton, Ralph Fiennes and Tom Hardy.
It’s pretty much tradition for on-screen Heathcliffs to be white at this point – and as much as we might be used to it, it still packs a disappointing punch to see the role miscast once again.
Not all Wuthering Heights adaptations have fallen into this casting trap. The 2011 version directed by Andrea Arnold saw Skins star Kaya Scodelario and first-time actor James Howson take on the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff, and received critical and audience praise for their reimagining.
Howson is one of the only non-white actors to have portrayed Heathcliff in a mainstream capacity, bringing the character closer to Brontë’s intended presentation.
What a shame that 13 years later, takes on Wuthering Heights haven’t progressed further than this.
In fact, they’ve gone backwards.
Heathcliff’s non-whiteness is an essential part of his character, and informs his interactions with the rest of the world.
In one passage, Mr Earnshaw, Cathy’s father, describes Heathcliff to be ‘as dark almost as if it came from the devil’ – clearly conflating his appearance with his moral character.
With Elordi adding to the appallingly long list of white men to play Heathcliff, Fennell eliminates several important layers of rich context.
Not only that, but she’s shutting down a valid conversation around how race can affect how people view a person, and how a person views themselves.
The wasted opportunities don’t stop there.
It’s been suggested that Brontë’s description of Heathcliff represents a Romani character – which means Fennell’s version of the story could have been a long-needed display of Romani identity in a mainstream project, even if an unknown actor was positioned in the role.
Not only does the casting of yet another white man take away from the story, this choice has been criticised as yet another example of whitewashing in the entertainment industry – the practice of presenting non-white characters with white actors.
From Yul Brynner playing a Thai monarch in The King and I in 1956, to Angelina Jolie playing real-life mixed-race journalist Mariane Pearl in 2007’s A Mighty Heart, to 2017’s Ghost in the Shell featuring Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk and Michael Pitt as Japanese characters, whitewashing is a practice as old as the industry itself, and further adds to the lazy idea that the stories of people of colour are not important, or marketable enough to be told.
Of course, filling a film with familiar faces is a safer commercial bet than a cast of fresh talent. But without people with power in the industry using their privilege to make changes, the dial doesn’t move.
We don’t get closer to having a Romani film star by refusing to search for, and nurture, unseen talent – instead, we get more of the same.
And even if the producers chose not to depict Heathcliff as Romani, talented actors such as Dev Patel or Jacob Anderson could have provided additional dimension and texture, while also being known to the audience.
What Fennell does with the literary staple is yet to be seen – for all we know, her interpretation of Cathy and Heathcliff could far surpass the expectations cast upon it at present.
Taking Fennell’s previous films Promising Young Woman and Saltburn into account, I imagine her Wuthering Heights will lean towards the eccentric, and take shocking risks to keep its viewers on their toes.
But the world has seen enough white Heathcliffs – I doubt that this new version will do much to change my mind.