When it comes to 2026 movie releases, no other movie promises audiences an epic romance like Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. It’s also one of this year’s upcoming book adaptations that’s led by two of Hollywood’s biggest names right now, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. When the movie stars recently spoke about their time on set, they shared an intriguing dynamic that took shape: obsession.
Wuthering Heights, which has already been called “aggressively provocative” by early audiences and faced whitewashing backlash, hits theaters just in time for Valentine’s Day. But what was it like for Robbie and Elordi to embody these iconic literary characters? The Barbie actress said this about interacting with her co-star on set early on:
I’m so codependent with people I work with and I love everyone so much and I’m always that person who’s so devastated when a job’s over and I never want it to end and I’m going to miss everyone so much… I think I developed that quite quickly with Jacob, too. I remember the first couple days on set, he would just be like always in the vicinity where I was, but like in a corner like watching Cathy.
During an interview with Fandango, Robbie shared she often gets close with her co-stars and finds it difficult to move on from projects. She also recalled Elordi lurking in the corners of the set near her once production began. As she continued:
I remember on day one I was like, ‘Oh, he’s right there.’ And then an hour later I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s over there.’ And then on the third day, I remember I found myself starting to look around to see where he was. Obviously, he’s going to be somewhere close by. Where is he right now? Because he’s not in a corner of a room watching me right now. And then, he wasn’t. And, I was really unnerved, and I felt quite lost like a kid without their blanket or something.
Margot Robbie suggested that writer/director Emerald Fennell might have asked Jacob Elordi to stay close to her, but the filmmaker said she didn’t. Here’s what Elordi had to say:
We have a mutual obsession. I think the thing is, regardless of plot or screenplay, if you have the opportunity to share a film set with Margot Robbie, you’re going to make sure you’re within 5 to 10 meters at all times. Watching how she drinks tea, how she eats her food, how she does it. When is it going to slip? When is the thing going to come undone. And, it never comes undone. She’s just like an elite actor and she’s producing the movie, you know? So, I don’t know how somebody has the skill and the wisdom to do that as a performer and to give the performance that she gave, but I was enamored by her.
Jacob Elordi got his start in The Kissing Booth movies and Euphoria, and has since had an impressive run of movies like Priscilla, Saltburn (also with Emerald Fennell) and Frankenstein. He’s been earning supporting actor nominations lately for Frankenstein, and even won the Critics Choice Award.
Margot Robbie is definitely one of the most high-profile actors he’s worked with, and it sounds like he wanted to take every opportunity to watch her work. We also have to wonder if Elordi was getting into character as Heathcliff here as one of the protagonists of Emily Brontë’s gothic tragedy. Robbie said it certainly helped that every scene in the movie either had Elordi’s Heathcliff in the scene or was about him. In her words:
If we’re not together in a scene, we’re talking about each other or thinking about each other. It becomes very focused on each other in every single thing that they do, which is actually also a really nice kind of straightforward thing to do in a movie as opposed to trying to play the subtext for a lot of plot points and this or a character who’s got very vague ambitions. It’s kind of like if all I knew that I was thinking about Heathcliff I was doing my job in every scene.
I’m certainly curious about how the actors’ descriptions about being on set together will translate into the movie itself. We also know that Robbie has so many costume changes in Wuthering Heights that it compares to Barbie. The Aussie actress filmed the role in the United Kingdom with the cast and crew just three months after giving birth to her first child, which meant she was “in a very different headspace,” according to Robbie.
You can see Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights in theaters starting February 13.