Jacob Elordi was feeling less than euphoric.
The star recounted a harrowing on-set experience while shooting “Wuthering Heights.”
“Something peculiar that happened while we were filming was when Siân [Miller], the make-up artist, was designing the scars from the whips for Heathcliff’s back,” Elordi told Esquire in an interview published on Friday. “She challenged me: ‘If Daniel Day-Lewis was playing Heathcliff, he would have come in with scars.’”
This sparked a little competition in the Australian actor.
“I said, ‘Well I’m going to go away and maim myself on the weekend to prove to you that I’m Heathcliff!’ That night I went home, and the house I was staying in had a steam shower: a brass knob that steam came from out of the wall; I was sitting on the floor of the shower…”
Director Emerald Fennell was stunned by the revelation, inquiring, “You were sitting on the floor?!”
For Elordi, while working on Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” he’d come home from shooting with “so much make-up in my fingers and in my feet all the time, and I left it on for the whole shoot because I couldn’t be bothered washing it all off.”
This time around, “as Heathcliff, I was covered in mange and dirt, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to do that again, I’m going to clean my feet properly every night and come in to work fresh the next day.’”
“So I went to clean my feet, and I leant back and my back seared into the steam knob and I stood up screaming; it tore up my back. When I went to work on Monday I had a second-degree burn.”
“I think that was in the first week of shooting. I got a text from Josey McNamara, the producer, saying, ‘Jacob’s in hospital,’” recalled Fennell, 40. “Obviously I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s had a car accident,’ and then he was like, ‘He’s burnt his back in the shower.’ I was like, ‘You know what, Josey? Start with that.’ Do you think it was the spirit of Daniel Day-Lewis?”
“It was actual Daniel Day-Lewis,” teased the “Saltburn” alum, 28. “In the shower. But I did feel something spiritual when we got to the Moors for the first time, when we stepped out in our costumes on this endless plain. You can see where the book came from when you’re there. You can feel it.”
Based on Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, “Wuthering Heights” follows Elordi’s Heathcliff who falls in love with Catherine (Margot Robbie), a woman who hails from a wealthy family in 18th-century England. Tragedy strikes as a result.
In December, Robbie, 35, defended her co-star after Elordi’s casting garnered backlash from online critics.
“I get it,” the “Barbie” star expressed during an interview with British Vogue at the time. “There’s nothing else to go off at this point until people see the movie.”
“I saw him play Heathcliff, and he is Heathcliff,” Robbie added. “I’d say, just wait. Trust me, you’ll be happy.”
The pair previously first came under fire after the romance project was announced in July 2024.
Some fans criticized Robbie for being too old to play Catherine, who is described as “almost 17” with “brown ringlets.”
Others questioned if Elordi was the right fit.
In the novel, the color of Heathcliff’s skin is left ambiguous, but the character is described at one point as a “dark-skinned gipsy” who wishes he had “light hair and a fair skin.”
Robbie disagreed, explaining that the “Euphoria” star was the perfect person for the part.
“It’s a character that has this lineage of other great actors who’ve played him, from Laurence Olivier to Richard Burton and Ralph Fiennes to Tom Hardy,” she detailed.
“To be a part of that is special,” Robbie added. “He’s incredible, and I believe in him so much. I honestly think he’s our generation’s Daniel Day-Lewis.”
Meanwhile, Elordi is gearing up for the 2026 Oscars where he is nominated for his performance as the Creature in “Frankenstein.”
“You’re supposed to say, you know, that it doesn’t mean anything and art is subjective and all these things, but it really was a dream of mine,” he shared while on Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” “Particularly because of Heath Ledger. He kind of showed me that it was possible.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
