Jacob Elordi left friends of his co-star Margot Robbie ‘frothing at the mouth’ with lust when she invited 20 pals to a private screening of the new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, she revealed recently.

The casting of Elordi as tortured anti-hero Heathcliff by director Emerald Fennell has, however, been condemned by Anita Rani because the Australian actor is white.

The Celebrity Race Across The World star claims that Emily Bronte wrote Heathcliff as a non-white character in her 1847 gothic masterpiece.

‘At the time, Britain was at the height of the colonial expansion,’ says Yorkshire-born Rani. ‘This tiny island was getting very rich from doing some very dark things around the world. Meanwhile in West Yorkshire, Emily and her two sisters were almost certainly not sitting around crocheting and dreaming of handsome princes.

‘They knew all about this because they were educated, they were reading the papers, they were thinking, they were writing and they were raging, and it’s in the characters in their books.

‘They’re women, they are independent, they’re clever, they’re passionate, they defy convention and they are questioning everything, particularly Victorian morality, which is why it’s important that Heathcliff isn’t white. It’s on the page, and what it does it changes everything. Think about it.’

Heathcliff is described as ‘dark-skinned’ or ‘gypsy in aspect’, and as having ‘black eyes’ by Bronte, who also writes at one point that his ‘face is as white as the wall behind him’.

Emerald, who won an Oscar for Promising Young Woman, has stressed that Wuthering Heights, which is released tomorrow, is her personal interpretation of how she imagined the novel as a teenager.

The casting of Elordi as tortured anti-hero Heathcliff by director Emerald Fennell has been condemned by Anita Rani because the Australian actor is white

Anita Rani says the Bronte sisters ‘defy convention and they are questioning everything, particularly Victorian morality, which is why it’s important that Heathcliff isn’t white’

Days after being lined up to play his first theatre role in a decade, controversial actor-turned-activist Laurence Fox bitterly reveals he’s been axed.

The former Lewis star, 47, has been persona non grata in many British acting circles since his outspoken performance on BBC Question Time in 2020. While declining to name the forthcoming role at Theatre Royal Winchester, Fox announces: ‘I got cancelled from this job. I will confess I’m hurt. I just want to do what I love. I don’t think that’s a crime.’

Miriam Margolyes says she rejected the chance to compete on The Celebrity Traitors because she considers the hit BBC show to be unkind. The Harry Potter star, 84, says her friend Sir Stephen Fry encouraged her to sign up. 

‘I won’t do anything like that because I think it’s cruel,’ says Miriam, who stars in Oscar-nominated short film A Friend Of Dorothy. ‘There is something nasty about it… When you eliminate somebody, I just don’t like that, so I said ‘No’.’