By the looks of Warner Bros.’ new teaser, the upcoming epic “Wuthering Heights” (2026) features a miscast star. But contrary to social media outrage, the problem’s not Jacob Elordi.
After the Aussie actor convincingly portrayed a doomed and dashing Englishman in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn (2023), she hired him to play Emily Brontë’s Gothic antihero Heathcliff. Then all hell broke loose online with indignant armchair experts insisting the Byronic character is Black.
This belief stems from the rise of “decolonizing the curriculum” in the 2000s, which treats “White” as a monolithic block of privilege. Did racism exist hundreds of years ago in Britain? Absolutely. In addition to Black people, swarthy Welsh (believed to have Iberian and Spanish genes) were considered an inferior race. Irish Catholics (especially those with dark hair and sallow complexions) also faced discrimination as they were legally banned from serving in government, practicing law, and holding certain military positions.
Despite enduring pre-20th century marginalization, these groups are often excluded from history curricula because they don’t fit into today’s select “people of color” (POC) box. With the current scholastic focus on social justice, philology (the study of language change) is also overlooked. Together, these classroom omissions bury the notion that Heathcliff’s “blackness” may have more to do with his brooding temperament and low social standing than immutable racial biology.
Brontë’s 1847 novel begins with the misguided city-slicker Lockwood visiting Wuthering Heights in Yorkshire. He’s (un)welcomed by a surly Heathcliff who Lockwood deduces is “a capital fellow.” Spoiler alert: he’s not! Lockwood then proceeds to mistake a heap of dead rabbits for sleeping kittens before observing his host looks like a “dark-skinned g*psy.” At this point in Chapter 1, it’s already clear Lockwood is an unreliable narrator.
Granted, other characters call young Heathcliff a “g*psy brat,” “vagabond”, “beggarly interloper” and “g*psy beggar.” In Brontë’s world and within this context, the word “g*psy” functions as a class-based slur for a rootless outsider rather than proof of ethnicity. In fact, the word Romani never appears in the text.
To be clear, people with complexions that weren’t fair—including tanned and unwashed laborers—were considered “dark-skinned” in the 18th and 19th centuries. Back then, “Black” wasn’t exclusively reserved for people of African and South Asian descent. It could apply to those with Celtic, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern coloring, as well as anyone with a sullen disposition. For example, Charlotte Brontë refers to her White, Brussels-born professor Constantin Héger as a “little, black, ugly being”—and she was in love with him!
In other words, presentists presuming the Georgian and Victorian use of “black” solely equated to a specific race—or race in general—are not accounting for semantic shifts through time. It’d be like future generations assuming a “hot” or “sick” person in 2025 was feverish opposed to attractive.
So, when the book’s heroine Catherine Earnshaw says Heathcliff looks “very black and cross,” she’s referring to his morose mood. And when the character is deemed a “black villain,” it just means he’s mean. Readers who interpret otherwise will encounter contradictions since Heathcliff is also described as “breathless and white” in one chapter and “white as the wall behind him” in another.
To further blur matters, housekeeper Nelly Dean says Heathcliff is not “a regular black.” Later, she remarks on his “ghastly paleness,” and asks, “Is he a ghoul or a vampire?” Heathcliff’s wife Isabella concludes he’s “a monster and not a human being,” a “fiend,” and an “incarnate goblin,” while his foster brother says he’s an “imp of Satan.”
This is a Gothic novel, after all, and Brontë keeps Heathcliff’s origins unknown to suggest he’s a supernatural being from hell instead of from a defined country. In Northern English folklore, the “Black Stranger” or “Dark Man” was a demonic archetype that had nothing to do with race. Consequently, Victorian readers could speculate Heathcliff made a deal with the devil to go from rags to riches during his mysterious three-year absence.
Alternatively, the possibility that Heathcliff is Mr. Earnshaw’s biological love child offers a grounded explanation for the animosity his foster brother and adoptive mother feel toward him. Earnshaw’s claim that he found Heathcliff in Liverpool is suspect since he couldn’t have walked roughly 120 miles to and from the city in three days. More likely, he had a mistress who bore his son about 12 miles away in Halifax, where the Irish and Welsh settled during the 18th century textile boom. While the novel never explicitly states this, the read-between-the-lines theory confirms Heathcliff’s recessive genes when he later sires a pale blond son with blue eyes.
Nevertheless, Critical Race Theorists point to Heathcliff’s supposed starting point in Liverpool (a major slave-trade port) to support the theory he is African. As a port for the East India Company, Liverpool saw sailors from India, Yemen, Malaya, and Arabia as well as Basque whalers and Southern European castaways. In fact, Heathcliff is compared to “a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway.”
But most selective historians fail to note Liverpool was dubbed “The Capital of North Wales” due to massive migration of North Walians. Those with dusky features were called “Dark Welsh” and, like the “Black Irish,” were systematically othered by the English gentry. Simply put, Heathcliff’s “darkness” is most likely Celtic not colonial.
According to The Brontës in Ireland (1893) and A Brontë Companion (1975), Emily Brontë may have modeled Heathcliff after Welsh Brunty whose life story is similar to her character’s. Believed to hail from Wales, it’s said her ancestors discovered the “gibberish-speaking” foundling on a ship from Dublin to Liverpool in the mid-18th century.
Thanks to advances in science, DNA research now links the “Dark Welsh” to the Basques of northern Spain—a group that includes Elordi’s own ancestors. Although the actor is technically “White,” his lineage actually aligns more with the character’s hinted heritage, making him better suited to the role than previous Heathcliffs.
Ironically, Bombay-born Merle Oberon passed as a Yorkshire lass when she starred in William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939). Despite her South Asian status, the starlet was well-suited to the role since her dark eyes and wavy brunette hair rival the book’s description of Catherine Earnshaw.
Similarly, Elordi’s physicality mirrors the novel’s description of Heathcliff as a “tall, athletic, well-formed man”‘ with “black hair” and “deep black eyes.” He is arguably closer to Brontë’s creation than Vietnamese-American Hong Chau is to the English housekeeper Nelly Dean or British-Pakistani actor Shazad Latif is to pale Edgar Linton.
Yes, Heathcliff faces prejudice early on, but to blame his setbacks solely on skin tone turns a complex psychological and class-based struggle into a modern treatise on identity politics. Ultimately, his ethnicity (whatever that be) does not prevent him from rising in society. The bigger barrier in the 18th century-set saga is gender since marriage is the only way a woman—of any race or class—could change her station. Yet when Catherine uses her head to choose a husband and her sister-in-law Isabella (Alison Oliver) does the reverse, tragedy ensues.
The “Wuthering Heights” trailer indicates Fennell’s comprehension of female oppression as stylized shots show the inherently wild Cathy restricted by the lacing on her corset while submissive Isabella is seen shackled and on her knees. Whether these scenes ring salacious or symbolic within the context of the movie remains to be seen.
Unfortunately, one doesn’t have to watch the film to know its producer Margot Robbie is too blonde and too old to portray a teenaged brunette. Not since 33-year-old Stockard Channing was cast as a high schooler in Grease (1978) has there been such a cringy discrepancy in age. When Channing’s character skips her period, it’s hard to tell if it’s because she’s pregnant or perimenopausal. Maybe hot flashes will be the reason Robbie’s 34-year-old Cathy roams the cold moors in a nightie.
Fortunately, Fennell has a knack for generating a macabre ambiance. In addition to her striking visuals and dry wit, the Oscar-winning writer of Promising Young Woman (2020) can convey the obsessive nature of relationships. This equips her with the right stuff to bring Brontë’s feminist bestseller to the big screen. Of course, audiences won’t know if her brazen interpretation is a breath of fresh air or a hot mess until it comes out on Valentine’s Weekend in 2026.