FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at Forty-Eight
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978
Will the New Film Adaptation from Emerald Fennell Bring Attention to a Masterpiece Song?
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ON 20th January…
IN THIS PHOTO: Emerald Fennell has directed a new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which is in cinemas from 14th February/PHOTO CREDIT: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images for Loewe
Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights turns forty-eight. It is one of the most remarkable debut single ever. I have asked before whether this song will ever get a viral moment or be used in a film. Rather than force new popularity and attention, it is a song that I don’t think had been talked about as much as it should. Although very well known, it is still a bit under-appreciated. Forty-eight years after it was released, nothing like it has come along. I am endlessly fascinated by how the song was born and Kate Bush’s take on it. Whereas other songwriters might cast Catherine Earnshaw as a victim and find sympathy, Wuthering Heights seems to cast her as a ghoul. This villain of the piece trying to drag Heathcliff away. If adaptations of Wuthering Heights have focused on the entire novel and balanced the romance with tragedy, Kate Bush’s song is very much about this intense and visceral moment where Earnshaw’s ghost tries to take Heathcliff away. Though there is passion and longing, Bush was influenced by the final moments of a 1967 T.V. adaptation that was shown. I am not sure the exact date she saw it, though she was later compelled to write a song about what she saw. It is interesting that her first single not only was about a novel (Emily Brontë’s sole novel of 1847), but is was this very specific aspect. I do like how Kate Bush cast herself as the heroine. Rather than a romantic take and sing about this desire, she is a ghost that you cannot really sympathise with. There have been some great adaptations through the years. The 1967 BBC version saw Ian McShane as Heathcliff and the late Angela Scoular as Catherine Earnshaw. A 1978 T.V. adaptation starred Ken Hutchison and Kay Adshead. In terms of recent versions, a 2022 film starring Jet Jandreau and Bryan Ferriter was produced. There hasn’t been a T.V. adaptation for a while. However, on each occasion, there is not really much connection with Kate Bush’s song. I am not suggesting the track should be used in adaptations, though I would like to think that there would be some form of retrospection of her classic.
Despite numerous versions of the novel being brought to the screen, could you say that any feel distinctly ‘Kate Bush’? In terms of a perhaps less orthodox or conventional telling of the novel. Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights seems so unusual and unique. No wonder it captured attention back in 1978. Emerald Fennell’s new film version has drawn a lot of attention. Some have criticised the casting and have slated the film. The trailer has definitely garnered reaction. Wuthering Heights is likely to be among the most discussed films of next year. It is out on 14th February. I am going to come to an interview from Vogue with its star, Margot Robbie. She stars opposite Jacob Elordi in a film that I feel is a much needed twist. Fennell very much bringing something distinct to her version. Perhaps quite unconventional and controversial in its way, I do feel a lot of the previous versions have been quite samey. Not really taking the text in a new direction. It would be nice to see a modern-day version that takes the novel and puts it in today’s culture. However, though Emerald Fennell is keeping things pure in terms of the time period, there is going to be something darker and a bit edgier in her version. I think the casting is brilliant. I sort of think of Margot Robbie as someone who is a Kate Bush fan. If she became a director, I’d like to imagine her slipping a Bush song in the mix. My hope is that this version of Wuthering Heights not only gets people listening to Kate Bush’s 1978 single. In a strange way, I feel Emerald Fennell links to Kate Bush. Being unconventional and out of the ordinary. Not in a bad way. It is hard to put into words, though people draw parallels in the bold, artistic vision of Fennell and they note that her creative spirit aligns with Bush's unique style. As Emerald Fennell is a Kate Bush fan, I do hope that her film will get people listen to arguably the best Wuthering Heights adaptation: the 1978 debut single from one fo the greatest artists of all time.
I do want to bring in parts of a Vogue interview from late last year with Margot Robbie. Can we draw parallels between Robbie’s Catherine Earnshaw and Kate Bush’s? I love Margot Robbie’s film roles and I think of Kate Bush. In terms of how Robbie can play these incredible heroines who are cool and kick-ass, though she can also switch to these romantic leads and then play historical characters. Such an adaptable and curious actor, I think Robbie’s version of Catherine Earnshaw will be closer to Kate Bush’s song. The spirit of that amazing single. Charli xcx, who recorded the songs for the Wuthering Heights soundtrack, is a big Kate Bush fan. In terms of the way Margot Robbie conducts her private life and keeps the personal personal, that puts me in mind of Kate Bush. Her boldness and how she cannot be categorised and easily defined, another quality of Kate Bush. I do think Robbie’s portrayal is going to be the closest we will get to the physical embodiment of Kate Bush’s Cathy. What that song summons. I want to get to some extracts from that recent Vogue interview:
“The first officially released photo showed Elordi’s finger entering Robbie’s open mouth, along with a few tufts of grass (twisted, earthy eroticism forever a Fennell calling card). Then came a flurry of paparazzi photos from the set, which featured Robbie drifting across the moors in a sumptuous if somewhat off-kilter wedding dress. (Per costume designer Jacqueline Durran, an industry titan – Atonement, Pride & Prejudice – it’s a style that marries Victorian and 1950s fashion, and references both the portraits of Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the wasp-waisted elegance of Charles James.)
The gown raised questions around period authenticity, which were swiftly answered by a deliciously off-the-wall first trailer, a sweaty, sensual, skin-crawling, deliberately fantastical fever dream with glossy red lacquered floors, heaving bosoms and more outlandish, eye-popping costumes, soundtracked by Charli XCX’s “Everything is Romantic”. (The ubiquitous pop star-cum-harbinger of cool is providing original songs for the movie too.)
Add to this a smart, sexy tagline (“Drive me mad”) and the film suddenly became the most talked-about of the year – and it’s not even out yet. When it opens on Valentine’s Day, Robbie says we will all have to, “Buckle up.”
She is a producer too, as she was on Fennell’s last two films. As a result, the actor has been hands-on about every aspect of Wuthering Heights, including its promotional campaign. “The first image anyone sees of a movie is when you actually begin entertaining them,” she tells me, grinning. For that first photo, she says, “I remember someone being like, ‘Do you want a double [to have a finger and some turf stuffed in their mouth]?’ And I was like, ‘How dare you even ask me?’” She lets out a delighted cackle.
She was also captivated by Fennell’s Cathy. “I just felt like…” Robbie takes a breath, her fork aloft. “Not like she’s mine, but like I both understood her and didn’t, in a way that drew me to her. It’s this puzzle you have to work out.” She would have produced the film anyway, but decided to throw her hat in the ring to play Cathy too – though she didn’t “want Emerald to feel like she had to say yes”.
Fennell was delighted. “Cathy is a star,” she explains. “She’s wilful, mean, a recreational sadist, a provocateur. She engages in cruelty in a way that is disturbing and fascinating. It was about finding someone who you would forgive in spite of yourself, someone who literally everyone in the world would understand why you love her. It’s difficult to find that supersized star power. Margot comes with big dick energy. That’s what Cathy needs.” The first time she met Robbie, nine years ago, Fennell says, “She smelt so delicious, which is an extremely creepy thing to remember. But she has that fairy dust. And she never, ever lets up. She operates at a higher percentage than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Elordi concurs. “Margot is a force,” he writes to me over email. “And she makes it look easy. Sometimes I think she has Hermione’s Time-Turner – she can raise a baby, shoot a movie, produce four others and still meet for a beer at 5pm.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Mikael Jansson
Robbie understands the kerfuffle around the film’s casting, to a degree. Of the chatter over this new Cathy being blonde not brunette, she says, “I get it” because “there’s nothing else to go off at this point until people see the movie”. (Fennell also clarifies that her Cathy is older than in the novel, in her mid-20s to early 30s.) On the subject of Elordi’s casting, though, Robbie is quiet and contemplative. “I saw him play Heathcliff,” she says finally. “And he is Heathcliff. I’d say, just wait. Trust me, you’ll be happy. 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. To be a part of that is special. He’s incredible and I believe in him so much. I honestly think he’s our generation’s Daniel Day-Lewis.”
The best reference point for the film as a whole, Robbie thinks, is Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet. “It’s a literary classic, visually stunning and emotionally resonant. In one of our first conversations about this film, I asked Emerald what her dream outcome was. She said, ‘I want this to be this generation’s Titanic. I went to the cinema to watch Romeo & Juliet eight times and I was on the ground crying when I wasn’t allowed to go back for a ninth. I want it to be that.’” Their hope is that women “go see it with 10 of their female friends”. “And I think it’s going to be an amazing date movie,” Robbie adds. She has been encouraged by the response from early test screenings. “I was surprised by the fact that so few people had actually read the book,” she says of the film’s first audiences. “Quite a few had heard of it, but actually a huge portion hadn’t. So, for many people, this is their introduction to Wuthering Heights, which is exciting.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Mikael Jansson
As with Barbie, a film much of the industry was sceptical about up until it was released and became an instant cultural touchstone, Robbie is determined to follow her instincts. “Everyone was like, ‘Well, that did well because of course it was going to.’ And I’m like…” She chuckles. “‘This was not the conversation at the time.’ I try to remind myself of that with Wuthering too. You have to just not listen to the noise and trust that the thing you’re putting out is what people will be happy to have.”
In many ways, Wuthering Heights is exactly the kind of film that Robbie wants her production company, LuckyChap, to keep making more of – ones with a female focus or storyteller, which “feel like they have the potential to penetrate culture and a reason to exist”. Projects in the pipeline include two directorial efforts from Olivia Wilde, new TV shows from Maid’s Molly Smith Metzler and My Old Ass’s Megan Park, and a movie from Rich Peppiatt, the Irish director behind the film Kneecap. (“I love Kneecap,” says Robbie of the 2024 movie. She saw the namesake band at Glastonbury last summer, too. “It was wild. The crowd was just mental.”)
She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop acting – next year, production begins on the 1960s Europe-set Ocean’s Eleven prequel she’s starring in with Bradley Cooper – but she’s also keen to direct. “That’s kind of where my focus is shifting to. I’ve wanted to direct for 10 years. I haven’t rushed into it, but I feel like it’s getting closer to that time when I’m ready to dive into that.” She’s just not yet sure what that project will be.
PHOTO CREDIT: Mikael Jansson
On weekends, Robbie hangs with the girls. There’s a group of her childhood friends in Australia, a gang of assistant directors who make up her London circle and in LA, actors including Phoebe Tonkin, Jessica McNamee and Nesta Cooper, as well as mates who work in advertising and PR. There was a recent girls’ trip to Miami, but mostly they drink rosé, host parties with mandatory themed costumes, often for no particular reason, and do karaoke until 2am (Robbie’s go-to is Cher’s “Believe”). In London, she loves doing “touristy shit”, including the Jack the Ripper and Ghost, Ghouls and Gallows walking tours. Next week in LA, they’re going to a pole dancing class.
When I catch up with Robbie on Zoom several days after that lesson, sitting in her light-filled office with a printed blue sofa and giant abstract canvases behind her, she’s still sore from it. Dressed in a monochrome Chanel tank and black Bec & Bridge trousers, with her shiny hair twisted casually into a low bun, she’s barefaced and in a slightly more serious and reflexive mood.
The only topic that remains off limits is her marriage to Ackerley, who is also her producing partner, and their son. As mentioned, the couple met on the set of the Second World War drama Suite Française, on which the Brit was third assistant director. They were London housemates before they got together and then cofounded LuckyChap. “I was the ultimate single gal,” Robbie told American Vogue back in 2016. “The idea of relationships made me want to vomit. And then this crept up on me”.
I think it was me thinking about Emerald Fennell and Margot Robbie. Women you feel connect with Kate Bush in many ways. I don’t think we will get any reference to Kate Bush in the soundtrack or interview around the film, yet I do hope that a young generation who are discovering Kate Bush and might also be fans of this upcoming film and would naturally check it out would then seek out Bush’s single. I feel the tone and nature of this new film adaptation screams Kate Bush in a very loving and positive way. How it does stand out and does something genuinely different. Bush, especially back in 1978, was not following the path you’d expect a female artist to. Producing music that was a departure from the sounds of the time, I know she is a huge film fan. I would like to think Bush will see the new film. Her single does deserve new streams and discussion when the film comes out (on 14th February), as I don’t think anyone will write about it. Margot Robbie, I feel, will link to Kate Bush in some form one day. Using one of her songs or doing something. I look at the trailer and promotional images and read that Vogue interview and something about Kate Bush comes to mind. That Charli xcx association. How she posted to TikTok a clip about her association with the film and doing the soundtrack and used Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights in the background. The most recent adaptation of this classic text does seem to be the most geared to Kate Bush. In terms of its risk-taking and originality. How those tied to the film are fans of Bush and could give her music, especially Wuthering Heights, a boost. If the Emerald Fennell-helmed film is a much-needed step in a new direction, is there a better adaptation of Wuthering Heights than Kate Bush’s single? I think not. Forty-eight years after the song’s release (20th January, 1978), it is clear that there is…
NOTHING quite like it.