A new, sensuous drama about Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë is a chance to introduce the Brontë sisters to younger audiences, one of the film’s stars has said.
Released in cinemas on Friday, Emily – directed by Frances O’Connor and starring Sex Education’s Emma Mackey in the titular role – imagines Brontë’s life in the years leading up to her writing one of English literature’s most feted novels.
Though it bucks the recent trend for millenialised period dramas (think, string versions of Ariana Grande on Bridgerton and Dakota Johnson’s Fleabag-esque breaking of the fourth wall in Persuasion), it still manages to capture the Victorian era through a modern sensibility. Emily, who died of tuberculosis at 30, is portrayed as a sensitive rebel and misfit who broke free of the shackles of society to live authentically.
“Emily Brontë, or definitely our interpretation of her, is hugely relatable,” said Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who plays William Weightman, a handsome parish curate who moves to town, excites the women and ultimately becomes Brontë’s illicit lover.
“There’s something quite contemporary about the film. It talks about all the things that are still incredibly relatable to a younger audience. Feeling like an outcast in society, being told you have to conform, fighting against that, and having the strength to stand by who you are.”
The film seeks to connect Brontë’s reclusiveness and emotional volatility to trauma and depression – issues that were rarely, if ever, taken seriously in the 19th century. “To look at it from a modern-day perspective, Emily clearly had some form of mental health issue,” Jackson-Cohen said.
The 35-year-old actor, who rose to fame after leading roles in Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, said Brontë was “ferocious, in an incredible way” and paid tribute to her “bravery to step outside the mould at that time. Still to this day, there’s pressure to keep us in boxes. She clearly was an extraordinary woman.”
While Weightman lived in the Brontë family’s home for some years, there is no historical record of he and Emily ever being together – in fact, it was Anne Brontë who letters reveal developed a close relationship with the clergyman. But with much of Emily’s life remaining a mystery (the little that’s known is filtered through her sister Charlotte’s biographies) there was space for film-makers to get creative.
And for many readers of Brontë, it’s satisfying to imagine the writer in the throes of a passionate love affair that inspired such characters as Cathy and Heathcliff.
“Weightman arrived in Haworth and was a bit of a charmer,” Jackson-Cohen said. “It’s true he wrote Valentine’s cards to all three Brontë sisters, and he actually ended up forming a very close bond with Anne. There were letters about her nursing him just before he died. The film takes that idea and says: ‘What if it had been Emily?’
“I think there’s something always quite interesting about forbidden love. I’m not religious, so in preparation for the role I spoke to so many priests and pastors to get an understanding of what it’s like to live with these rules. For these people, to have their faith questioned because of their own desire must have felt like an earthquake.”
Though Jackson-Cohen has a history of playing toxic men – from the murderous husband in 2020 horror film The Invisible Man to the creepy husband in Apple TV+’s recent psychological thriller series Surface – Weightman was more nuanced, he said.
“It’s quite weird as an actor, you can understand their place within the piece but you can’t judge them, you have to find a way to not be aware of how toxic they’re being and find a way to rationalise their behaviour,” he said.
“What’s interesting about this film is there are all these characters which aren’t necessarily likable, they’re incredibly flawed, much like Wuthering Heights itself.
“I don’t know if I’d classify Weightman as toxic. He behaves badly, but hopefully the understanding is it’s because of society at the time, him protecting his faith, and also the scandal that would have ensued for both him and Emily. If you think back, there was no space in society for women to be sexually active without being married. And for men, and specifically a clergymen.”
Jackson-Cohen also commended O’Connor’s immersion into the Brontë sisters’ life. “The love that she has for the sisters’ work makes this film unique,” he said. The debut director, who previously starred in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and The Importance of Being Earnest, has said the film is bound to wind up historians.
“But the film isn’t a biopic by any means,” Jackson-Cohen said. “It’s an ode to Emily’s imagination. It cracks open the idea of creativity and what may or may not have inspired her to write this novel that still to this day is so highly revered.”
