Margot Robbie is currently steaming up screens in her new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and one of the movie’s most important sets has a bizarre connection to the Barbie star.
Wuthering Heights is the third film from Emerald Fennell, following her Oscar-winning debut Promising Young Woman, and acclaimed followup Saltburn.
Fennell’s new movie sees her adapt the beloved Emily Brontë novel, and has been mired in controversy since it was announced, with everything from casting and period accuracy to tone and sex scenes being criticized.
The movie hit cinemas worldwide today (February 13), and thanks to new quotes from the writer-director, Cathy’s bedroom set is now under the microscope – for a surprising reason.
Why Wuthering Heights walls are based on Margot Robbie’s skin
Margot Robbie plays Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights, and one of the film’s most important sets is her bedroom, where desire is expressed, and walls are licked (see image below).
Fennell and her production designer Suzie Davies went to great lengths to nail a specific look for the Thrushcross Grange room, by using grafts of Robbie’s skin as a template.
“We asked her to send us all her veins and her freckles,” Fennell explained during a British Film Institute Q&A (as per LADbible), “And then we printed it on silk, stuffed it, and put latex over it so that it could sweat.”
There’s method in that madness, however, with Fennell adding: “It’s a visual representation of what it feels like to be made a wife. To be made an object of beauty. To be a collector’s item.”
The connections between actress and set don’t end there either, as set decorator Charlotte Dirickx told Architectural Digest that “you can see her veins on the carpet too,” while AD also divulged that a table on that carpet features a Margot Robbie “hair curtain.”
In short, as well as being in the room, Cathy/Robbie is all over it.
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