After turning heads in “Saltburn” and “Euphoria,” Jacob Elordi is preparing audiences for something even more wrenching with Emerald Fennell’s take on “Wuthering Heights.” Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast while promoting his work in Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” Elordi didn’t hesitate when asked how far the director pushes the material.
“I think it’s gonna obliterate your heart,” he said, revealing he had recently seen the finished movie. “It’s such a painful love story and such a tragedy, the whole thing, and I just got to see the film recently. And it’s so painfully beautiful and agonizing to watch them suffer, to suffer in the most beautiful frames, you know, you’ve ever seen.”
Elordi made a point to credit the film’s visual power to its cinematographer, Linus Sandgren (“La La Land,” “Saltburn”), explaining that Sandgren’s eye deepens the emotional impact of the story. “Linus shot the film, so it’s just… it’s stunning,” he said. The sheer beauty of the imagery, he admitted, made it hard to fully articulate the experience. “I haven’t quite wrapped my head around it yet,” he said, “but I mean, I’ve not seen a film like it in a long while.”
To contextualize their continuing collaboration, Elordi also reflected on his first experience working with Fennell on “Saltburn,” noting that he had never viewed it as the incendiary shock piece that many commentators claimed it to be.
“I didn’t think it was so extreme,” he said, looking back on the film’s divisive release. “I found the world’s reaction to be slightly prudish, actually.”
That response surprised him, especially given Fennell’s reputation for provocation. From the outside, audiences seemed ready to label the film an exercise in button-pushing excess — but from Elordi’s perspective, it belonged to a wider cinematic tradition with far more transgressive precedents. “There are so many films out there that are like… infinitely more disturbing,” he said.
What fascinated him wasn’t the content, but the evolving perception of it. “The film lived two different lives,” he explained. “There was a life when it was just in cinemas, and it had a different response. And then once it hit a streaming service, it got a whole different… the whole lens on the film changed.”
He said the shift in platform fundamentally altered the way audiences engaged with the material. “Once it goes on a streamer, it gets looked at through more of a social lens than an experiential cinematic sort of experience,” he noted. “And it does change the way the film is received.”
Elordi also laughed about his “Wuthering Heights” co-star Margot Robbie, calling her a “witch” and admiring the depth of her movie knowledge. “She knows all, Margot Robbie,” he said. “She knows all.”
As for “Wuthering Heights,” Elordi’s reaction suggests that when Fennell’s adaptation arrives on February 13, 2026, it’s one to keep firmly on the radar. Until then, you can watch more from Elordi’s Happy Sad Confused appearance — including his comments on “Frankenstein” and working with Ridley Scott — in the full interview below.
