Wuthering Heights director Emerald Fennell is defending her choice to cast Jacob Elordi in the role of Heathcliff for her upcoming adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel. "[Jacob Elordi] looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff in the first book that I read," Fennell, 39, said during a Friday, September 26, panel at the Brontë Women's Writing Festival in England, per Variety. "And it was so awful because I so wanted to scream. Not the professional thing to do, obviously." Fennell first cast Elordi, 28, in her 2023 critically acclaimed film Saltburn.