Margot Robbie 'wrong choice' to portray Catherine in new 'Wuthering Heights' film

Margot Robbie has been spotted wearing a dramatic wedding gown while filming Emerald Fennell's controversial adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

The Australian Barbie actor, 36, will star as Catherine Earnshaw opposite Saltburn star Jacob Elordi as her brooding love interest, Heathcliff.

In photos captured on Friday (21 March), Robbie looked serene while standing in the misty countryside wearing a white silk wedding dress, which has a bustier top half with puff sleeves and a full princess-style skirt.

A large, flowing veil was draped across her head as she held a bouquet of roses, and in other pictures obtained by the Daily Mail, the veil was removed and flowing in the wind behind her.

Filming began in January, with a February 2026 release date scheduled. Robbie’s company LuckyChap is producing the film. LuckyChap also produced Fennel’s Saltburn and Promising Young Woman.

Brontë's classic gothic novel Wuthering Heights, published in 1850, follows the relationship between the Earnshaw and Linton families in rural Yorkshire around 1770 and the tumultuous relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, an orphan who is fostered by her father.

At this stage, it is not known how closely Fennell’s version will follow the book. However, when the casting of Robbie and Elordi was announced last, Brontë fans decried it as the wrong choice.

The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey asked: “Did anyone actually read the book before deciding this?”

In response to the first pictures of Robbie in the role captured on Friday, one fan wrote online: “I love Margot so much she’s such a beautiful talented actress but Wuthering Heights called for such a different vibe.”

“Why is she wearing an Eighties wedding dress?” one person asked, as another said: “I love her but she's not the right choice to play Cathy and the visual is not fitting the book.”

“She looks beautiful but she's not Cathy,” said another.

The casting of Elordi as Heathcliff was criticised in particular since the character is described in the book as having dark hair, dark eyes, and dark skin.

While history shows that the miscasting of Heathcliff in film or TV adaptations is nothing new – the character has been played by the likes of Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy and even Cliff Richard – Elordi’s casting has raised eyebrows.

One X/Twitter wrote of Elordi’s casting: “Heathcliff is described as a dark-skinned brown man in the book and a major plot point is that he was subjected to racist abuse by his adopted family but yeah sure Jacob Elordi is perfect!”

Another contentious issue criticised by Brontë readers is that Elordi and Robbie are the wrong ages for their characters, as their characters are teenagers for much of the book’s plot. However, the character Mr Lockwood also meets Heathcliff 20 years later, when he is around 40.

One critic wrote: “White Heathcliff and 34-year-old Cathy, and they both look like they belong on Instagram...”

While the lead actors haven’t acted together before, Robbie previously praised Elordi in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar, calling him “wonderful”.

“I worked with him on Saltburn in a producer-actor capacity. So I haven’t shared the screen with him before, but I know I've seen him on set, I've been around him on set, and he's just – he’s got an incredible presence,” she said.

“He's a movie star – he's got that charisma. He holds a frame. He's also really lovely and from the same state that I'm from in Australia. We're about an hour away from each other, but he's from Brisbane, and I'm from the Gold Coast.”

The Independent