- 2 days ago
'Wuthering Heights' director Emerald Fennell takes us through the scene where Heathcliff returns to Cathy's marital home in Thrushcross Grange after five years. Emerald explains the meaning behind each intricate detail from the set design to working alongside Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, bringing the timeless story to life.
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Paola Esquivel Oliveros
Editor: Michael Park
Talent: Emerald Fennell
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors
Associate Producer: Lyla Neely
Production Manager: Jonathan Rinkerman
Associate Production Manager: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Chloe Ramos
Gaffer: Niklas Moller
Audio Engineer: Mariya Chulichkova
Production Assistant: Courtney Podraza; Shanti Cuizon-Burden
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Senior Manager; Creative Development: Hannah Pak
Director; Creative Development: Claire Buss
Director; Content Production: Lane Williamson
Executive Director; Global Video: Ella Ruffel
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Paola Esquivel Oliveros
Editor: Michael Park
Talent: Emerald Fennell
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors
Associate Producer: Lyla Neely
Production Manager: Jonathan Rinkerman
Associate Production Manager: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Chloe Ramos
Gaffer: Niklas Moller
Audio Engineer: Mariya Chulichkova
Production Assistant: Courtney Podraza; Shanti Cuizon-Burden
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Senior Manager; Creative Development: Hannah Pak
Director; Creative Development: Claire Buss
Director; Content Production: Lane Williamson
Executive Director; Global Video: Ella Ruffel
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00It's hard not to want to.
00:02Sorry, Margot.
00:03She won't mind.
00:03She looks even more gorgeous than ever, of course.
00:06Hello, I'm Emerald Fennell.
00:08I'm the writer and director of Wuthering Heights,
00:10and this is Notes on a Scene.
00:12So you have been abroad?
00:13Oh, Edgar, look at him.
00:15Of course he has.
00:17Tell us, Heathcliff, where have you been?
00:20In this part of the movie, we are in Thrushcross Grange,
00:23which is where it's Cathy's marital home.
00:25And as you'll see, it's very restrained in its decor.
00:29Heathcliff's been absent for five years,
00:31and he has just returned.
00:33Nobody's known where he's been,
00:34and he's had undergone somewhat of a transformation.
00:37He was a servant and stable boy at Wuthering Heights
00:41when Cathy was growing up,
00:42and now he's come back and he's rich,
00:44and he's determined to ruin lives.
00:47This dinner is a power dinner, right?
00:49This is a power move.
00:51Heathcliff is coming over,
00:52and Cathy needs to show him that she made the right choice.
00:55So she's wearing all of her diamonds,
00:57wearing her most sort of gorgeous dress.
01:01Jacqueline Duran, the costume designer,
01:02is generational genius.
01:04And so what we decided to do with the costumes
01:06and the set design in this movie
01:07is really choose everything from an emotional place.
01:10So it's a very expressive,
01:11kind of metaphorical way of working.
01:13So we were looking at other movies
01:15and all sorts of different references
01:17and fashion from all eras,
01:19because what we wanted was it to kind of provoke
01:21a sort of primal response rather than a literal one.
01:24The thing about Wuthering Heights, the book,
01:26is it sort of timeless?
01:30It's kind of got this uncanny feeling of being of its time,
01:33but not really of its time or any time.
01:35So that's kind of what we wanted to create here,
01:36which means the costumes are all,
01:38they just tell you a lot about the characters.
01:40And we also made sure that the food in every scene
01:43had a kind of meaning.
01:45And so here we've got these lobsters are having a fight.
01:48You can just see just in front of,
01:50between Edgar and Kathy here,
01:51there are two lobsters like going at it.
01:54And that kind of stuff is just like,
01:55why wouldn't you?
01:56Why wouldn't you?
01:57And then, you know, talking of props,
01:58we also have like, this is Heathcliff's pipe,
02:01which we talked a lot about
02:02because Heathcliff in the book disappears
02:05and he comes back and he's very rich
02:06and it's never explained why.
02:08Sort of part of this kind of uncanny sort of gothic world
02:12of things happen and you never really quite
02:14know how.
02:15And so we kind of felt that he'd perhaps been a pirate
02:20or a smuggler.
02:21We thought it would definitely be on the edge of legality.
02:25So he's got this incredible scrimshaw pipe,
02:27which was a kind of, they whittled things out of bone
02:29and scratched kind of pictures into it.
02:31And so this pipe, now Jacob Owens actually,
02:34because it was his wrap gift.
02:35It was incredibly beautiful and intricate.
02:37You know, just talking about set design.
02:39So this was a composite set.
02:40So both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grains
02:43were composite, which means you can use them.
02:45They're connected.
02:46It's a real place.
02:47We built all of the rooms to have this like gigantic scale.
02:50What we really wanted to show was that a level of like wealth
02:53and opulence that was just completely unheard of in this area at this time.
02:58We felt like for us as a modern audience to sort of understand Cathy's decision,
03:03it wasn't just the house next door that was quite nice.
03:06It was that she was being offered not just comfort and security and wealth,
03:11but something kind of strange and new and exciting to some degree.
03:16So we built everything to this kind of massive scale.
03:19And you can see here, so the panels here behind Cathy, they're all silver gilt.
03:23They were hand gilded. And then what we did was we looked at decorative paneling of the time
03:28had these sort of swathes of, I suppose it would have been like gesso plaster.
03:34But what Susie Davis, the incredible production designer did, we wanted it to feel like
03:39everything in this film is a bit wet.
03:41So we wanted everything to feel like it was sweating.
03:43So what we did was make this decorative paneling out of crystal.
03:47And so what happens is that you can see some of these crystals then end up like pooling on the
03:52floor.
03:52So you have these patches of crystals where it looks like they've kind of slid off the walls.
03:56And that's the kind of thing that when you make your own, you build your own world,
04:01you can sort of get into that level of detail.
04:03And then outside here you can see, so the garden was also composite,
04:06so you can kind of come in and out.
04:08I feel like there are certain things, if you're creating a fantasy world,
04:11it needs to be sort of rooted in something that's real.
04:14And so the garden outside is a living garden.
04:18It's real grass, it's real flowers, they're real trees.
04:21And that was really important because I really do feel like movement's a very important thing to me.
04:25The way that plants move in the wind is so different if they're not real.
04:29And I think you can tell, even if you don't know that's what it is, you can sort of feel
04:33that.
04:34So this garden, which you can see through the window, is alive.
04:37And then of course, our brilliant special effects department, who are geniuses,
04:42are pumping in a huge amount of Atmos to make it that kind of classic misty Yorkshire background.
04:48And it's just the pure Gothic, this stuff.
04:50We built Wuthering Heights, the house, the place to be slightly too low for Jacob's height,
04:55or rather just above him, so he's always slightly stooped.
04:58Actually, we kind of wanted everyone to feel like dolls in this place,
05:03that it had this sort of surreal scale, so that nobody quite felt like they lived inside it,
05:09that it was a place for show rather than for the reality of being a human.
05:16We kind of needed this world to have that sense of uncanny artificiality.
05:21Tell us, Heathcliff, where have you been?
05:24What have you been doing these past years? Is it very exciting?
05:28Obviously, this is the moment to talk about Margot and how incredible she is.
05:32I think the thing about Cathy Earnshaw is that she's an extremely, deeply unlikable character,
05:38an unlikable person.
05:39In the book, she's sort of constantly described as being, you know, vain, capricious,
05:46haughty, self-serving, cruel to the point that she sort of enjoys hurting people just to kind of
05:52win them back.
05:52It was really important to me to find somebody who had a sort of charisma,
05:56the charisma that could like hold all of that, somebody like a sort of Elizabeth Taylor essentially.
06:00And Margot is one of those incredibly rare actors who just has a kind of charisma that just
06:06shatters through the camera, like you feel it. And you also find yourself loving her in spite of
06:12yourself. And that's what this story is about is how far somebody can go and you still love them.
06:17And her performance is just so beguiling and so fascinating and complicated and beautiful.
06:23And the way that I like to work and we like to work together, all of us, is to kind
06:27of,
06:28to constantly be challenging the material and putting it under stress and surprising each other.
06:33So this classic dinner table scene, right? Those scenes are famously quite difficult to
06:38shoot because you just need a lot of coverage. And what can happen very quickly is people can just
06:41like find themselves getting into a pattern of speaking or, you know, it's just, it's just a
06:47natural thing that happens with everyone. And so what I always like to do is kind of apply pressure
06:53to different performers at different times, play everything in slightly different ways,
06:57give people kind of, you know, sometimes conflicting notes so that there's always a sense that something
07:03new is happening in each take and each setup, because I think otherwise quite quickly you find
07:07it becomes sort of stagey and tiring. Some of these takes, Margot is furious and some of them she's
07:14delighted and some of them she's barely able to speak. She's so undone by Heathcliff's presence.
07:20And sometimes she barely looks at him, you know, and it's the same for everyone. We have so many options
07:25from everyone because they're all so good. They want to do that. Shehzad Latif plays Edgar, who I
07:30think was probably the hardest part in this movie because you're playing the kind of romantic rival,
07:35right? Being a romantic lead is a very difficult thing to do. And I always knew that what I wanted
07:41for Edgar was somebody who was an actual threat to Heathcliff, but whose energy was very different.
07:46And actually, I think in many ways, he's kind of the linchpin of the whole film, because if you,
07:51if you invest in him and you understand why Cathy chooses him, I think it really changes the dynamic.
07:57I think that's the thing that's delightful about working with these guys is, is they're not ever
08:02interested in playing it safe. And here, I just want to do a kind of shout out to Sean, who
08:06is the
08:06most incredible makeup designer. A lot of the kind of hair and makeup brief for this, for Cathy moving
08:13to Thrushcross Grange was that she sort of became part of the house. She's like a godlike presence,
08:18both Cathy and Margot. But there's a sense of this world and this marriage sort of trying to contain
08:24her. And so a lot of her clothes tend to sort of emulate the rooms that she's in. Or here,
08:29for
08:29example, we have the crystals on her face, which kind of echo the crystals on the wall and sort of
08:35have that feeling of sort of perspiration, that it's beautiful, but there's something kind of
08:40unnerving about it. And again, it's sort of looking at hair and makeup as a expressive method and a
08:46metaphorical method of like storytelling rather than it necessarily being kind of of its time.
08:51Now here, we get to see some of this lovely scrimshaw work that's happening. And it's all about,
08:59this is Heathcliff's coming back and he's really, in the most basic sense, showing Cathy what she's
09:04missed. It's revenge. He's coming back to say like, you spurned me and you're going to regret it for
09:11the rest of your life. That is his mission here. And so of course, it makes sense that he's the
09:15absolute epitome of the kind of Byronic hero, the sort of Georgian long coat. When baby Heathcliff
09:22arrives at, young Heathcliff, I should say, arrives at Wuthering Heights missing a tooth. And so
09:28he comes back and obviously he's got this gold tooth and he's got this gold earring. He comes in with
09:33this sort of cane. He's obviously just sort of arrived in England and he's gone straight to
09:37Savile Row and said, give me the best, best, best, but he never quite fits it comfortably.
09:43And Jacob's amazing here because I think the thing that was really interesting is we kept pushing,
09:47performance wise, we kept pushing how comfortable he was in this environment because Heathcliff would be
09:53extremely uncomfortable, not just because of the sort of wealth and the sort of class, but also because
09:59he loves Kathy. And this is the first time he's seeing her as a wife and that's devastating. And so
10:06in order to kind of really push it, what we were sort of doing was seeing how good Heathcliff could
10:10be at playing the gentleman and the seducer and all of the things that he becomes in this scene.
10:17And actually what we found was the more comfortable he appeared to be, the more disconcerting it was for
10:22Kathy and for everyone else, rather than just being kind of like contained and uncomfortable, which of
10:27course is what he's feeling inside. He sort of, he gives this like disconcertingly suave performance.
10:33And I think that was something that was just really, really crucial for this scene and the kind of
10:38tension. I think the thing about Jacob, he's very similar to Margot in that he's got this kind of
10:44center. There's an enormous amount of love and tenderness and generosity in him, which means that even
10:51when he's playing someone violent, cruel, vengeful. Heathcliff is one of the least likable characters
10:59in literature really. And so again, like Kathy, it needed, you know, for this version of the movie,
11:05somebody who we would at least be able to connect to in some way. Jacob knows and profoundly understands
11:13that Heathcliff is horrible and that there's so much shame attached to that. And I think that Jacob was so
11:19brilliant at always, always being able to communicate the shame that he feels about himself and his
11:23behaviour and that he wishes he was better. That is always the most interesting tension, isn't it?
11:30It's not just between characters, it's that kind of internal struggle. And for Heathcliff, you know,
11:35to make him a character that you would even want to sort of watch or follow is that you know
11:41that he,
11:41he wishes he could be better and he doesn't know how to be. Kathy doesn't wish she could be better
11:47because she thinks she's already the best. And that's kind of why we love her because she sort
11:51of has no self-awareness and, and that there's something sort of glorious about that. But for
11:55Heathcliff, it's very different. He's, he knows, but he doesn't know how to change it. And that's a very
12:01moving and I think relatable thing. And that's what one of his really amazing skills is, is showing all
12:06of that. But in a very kind of subtle way. Is that all? At times? After near five years, it
12:17was exciting.
12:19At times. The scene in general, I would say, is one of the examples that I would say that my
12:25friend
12:25Jessica Knappett, who plays Mrs. Burton in this film, always referred to it as Wuthering Heights, the comedy.
12:30When you're dealing with the world of the Gothic and huge emotions, you're always rubbing up against
12:35kind of melodrama and camp. And it feels to me that you can't really have these huge emotional
12:41landscapes and worlds without some humour. The thing that you do really as a director,
12:47maybe more than anything, is, is just you're, you're kind of on the pedals of pressure and release.
12:51And sometimes that pressure is, you know, sexual tension and it's released by a kiss, let's say. But then
12:57sometimes it's like an unbearable level of embarrassment or mortification or tension.
13:02And then it has to be released, released with a laugh. So this scene, because it's so tense and
13:09there's so much silence and there's so much unsaid between these characters, a bomb has just been
13:13detonated in these people's lives. And every single person around this table knows it. And they're having
13:17a polite conversation. It's in many ways, similar to the lunch scene, the shepherd's pie scene in
13:22Thoughtburn. Very similar thing. It's people attempting to have a normal conversation when
13:27their world's just ended. And so I think to do that, it does sort of sometimes need to be
13:33disconcertingly funny. Now, Alison Oliver, she plays Isabella, who in this is, is Edgar's ward.
13:38And she's been kept in this kind of, as many women at the time, and even now are kept in
13:43this kind of
13:44eternal sort of girlhood. And so she's, she's sort of never really been allowed to become a woman.
13:49And then she sees Heathcliff for the first time and completely changes everything. And it's such
13:56a brilliant performance. It's so, so layered, so clever, so connected, I think, to the material,
14:03not just of the film, but of Bronte. We sort of always talked about Isabella as sort of possibly
14:10being like an Emily Bronte, somebody who wasn't allowed to sort of exist in the world in the manner
14:16that they would have liked to perhaps. But anyway, it's such a great performance. And the sort of
14:21tension, I think also the tension between her and Heathcliff is just fantastic.
14:29I see you want me to press it out of you. Well, I will not beg you for your story,
14:35Heathcliff.
14:37In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that it was very boring.
14:40It wasn't. Perhaps he was a pirate. Talk about Hong Chao, who is, again,
14:46one of the most deeply talented actresses. She is all the things that I love in an actor,
14:51when they give performances that are slightly disconcerting, you know, that are sympathetic
14:56in ways you're not expecting or kind of perturbing in ways you're not expecting. She will never do the
15:02same thing twice, but, but it's impossible to put your finger on what exactly she's done.
15:06It's absolutely amazing. And she has a very complicated character because Nellie Dean in the
15:12book is the, she's the narrator, sort of second narrator of the book. And there's an amazing
15:18piece of scholarship, which says Nellie Dean is the real villain of Wuthering Heights, which I don't
15:22believe myself, but, but Nellie is the person who is sort of, in many ways, she operates as the
15:28audience. She's like a sane person in an insane world. And she's constantly forced to watch these two
15:37maniacs essentially blow up everyone's lives around them. She's trying to wrestle sanity back
15:42into the room and unfortunately failing at every turn, but it's such a, it's such an incredible
15:47performance and such a, and such a moving one, actually.
15:50Perhaps I was.
15:51Oh dear, I surely know. I really don't care what you have been doing.
15:57Do I, Edgar? Darling? Have I even mentioned Heathcliff?
16:04A lovely bit of cruelty there. Just Cathy reminding Heathcliff that she's never spoken his name
16:09since he left. When of course we know, having seen time past, that he is all she has thought
16:13of this whole time. Here, I'd love to talk about the Doll's House, which is an exact scale model
16:18of the Thrushcross Grange itself and is one of Isabella's craft projects. In an earlier scene,
16:24we had to do a kind of very complicated in-camera trick where the house became the Doll's House,
16:29which meant months and months of planning. But one of the fun things of the Doll's House is it always
16:34mimics what's happening in the house. So when it's snowing, the Doll's House is covered in snow and has
16:39a little wreath on it. Or like here tonight, it's candle lit, like the house itself. So it's always
16:45a little version of what's happening here. And I think again, it's just that kind of engagement
16:51of the suspension of disbelief. It's that lovely thing of things are real and not real at the same
16:56time. And what you always want to make something that is, it may not be literally real, but it's
17:01emotionally resonant. And I feel like every time I see the Doll's House, it sort of reminds me of that,
17:07that feeling. I do not believe so, my love. You see? Keep your secrets, Heathcliff. Then we will
17:13have to assume that your fortune was most ill-gotten. Where are you staying? At Wuthering Heights.
17:20I just quickly want to talk about the lighting in this scene and Linus Sangren, who is the most
17:25incredible cinematographer in the world. It's just such a pleasure to work with him because I think that
17:29he and so many, so many of us on the crew were kind of determined to create this sort of
17:36emotional
17:37world. In this scene, and as much as we could in all of it, it's about lighting things with real
17:44candle light. So we had all of these candles made with double, triple wicks so that we could really
17:50put the light into people's faces. But also that they're kind of, there's a slightly up-lighting
17:55thing. There's a sort of, even though it's, everyone looks beautiful, there's a slightly
17:59disconcerting kind of gothic underlights that has a sort of slightly sinister feeling. And I think what
18:05Linus is so good at as well as sort of using cold and warmth. And so we have this sort
18:11of profoundly
18:11cold room in this cold moonlight and this sort of warmth in people's faces, but that isn't quite warm.
18:18It's sort of slightly unpleasant and extremely gothic. We sort of at every point have to acknowledge the
18:24world of the gothic and what that looks like and what people bring to that themselves.
18:30No, you mustn't. The place is no more than a ruin. Tell him, Edgar, he must come here.
18:39Indeed, if he...
18:40No, I would rather be home.
18:43Home? Yes, I suppose it is a sort of home for you.
18:45Yes, I should say so, since I bought it.
18:49Obsessed with this moment because whenever we play this, everyone like cheers. And it's sort of,
18:54I think it really says a lot about how we all feel about home ownership. That he's finally,
19:00he's finally sort of got Wuthering Heights. But no, it's, these are the kind of moments that I
19:05absolutely love. These kind of scenes when that Heathcliff has deliberately kept this information to
19:11himself just in order to kind of have the maximum impact, which basically is the most real housewives
19:18thing in the world. And I think, you know, it's always remembering that we're dealing with two
19:22characters here who are emotional terrorists. And it's just an extremely fun thing to watch them
19:29go, like go head to head. You did not. Oh, how wonderful. For us to have a neighbour.
19:38So here we get a real look at this incredible design. It's so thrilling. Also, it's kind of,
19:44it's interesting because of course you build all of these things and you have to be really careful
19:47about how sparingly you show them because so often I really don't want these, these kind of
19:53mise-en-scene to take over the whole film. You sort of want to have the joy of the world
19:58building, but
19:58you don't want to be showy-offy about it. So here we've got just to go through it. So everything
20:03here
20:03is kind of this sort of strange silver. What you can't see up here, all of the ceiling roses
20:09in Thrushcross Grange are held up by disembodied hands, which is just the sort of thing that Susie
20:15always does, the kind of like maniacal detail that I really love. And so what we've got here
20:20is these are all kind of these mirrored tiles. So they kind of reflect the fire in such a beautiful
20:27way. And these are sculptures by an amazing sculptor called Anne Carrington, who they're made out of
20:32knives and forks and cutlery. And again, it's sort of that very kind of Victorian Thrushcross idea of
20:38of things that are functional or sort of human, of human use becoming decorative in a sort of deranged
20:43way. Also, this is the first time and only time here that we really get a great look at just
20:49the unbelievable costumes of Jacqueline. So this is another motif we have again and again with these
20:54costumes at Thrushcross. It's sort of caging. So this is a sequin overlay, which is a sort of cage
21:00made of sequins. So it's like a fishing net almost made of sequins, which again, it's just like always
21:06bringing it back to that feeling of sort of entrapment or encasement.
21:12Wonderful.
21:14The thing that I have learnt is, it's like the film and the book itself, it's cyclical.
21:19What I've learnt is you can never, you can't ever learn or know anything about this book. Even though
21:26I have spent 25 years obsessed with this book, a significant portion of my life over the last few
21:32years making this film, I still go back to the book and find things that I didn't find before.
21:37I still imagine things that aren't in there. It's the most extraordinarily slippery and thrilling
21:44and visceral and timeless thing, Wuthering Heights. I think the thing of making film is in many ways,
21:52it's an exercise in futility. Even, you know, you build these beautiful sets and they're destroyed.
21:56And so you're always asking yourself what the purpose is of making something, especially
22:02making something that you love so much. And I suppose it's really just trying to communicate
22:07a feeling and to kind of forge a connection. And for me, the feeling of reading Wuthering Heights was
22:13sort of profound and physical and emotional. And so I hope that this film, which isn't really an
22:20adaptation so much as it is a kind of response to the book, is that hopefully it, you know, this
22:27movie may connect with someone in the way that the book connected with me.
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