As far as Heathcliff’s otherness is concerned: yes, it is an important part of his character. But the beauty of art – and of a 177-year-old tale of pure fiction – is that the creator (in this case, Fennell) can (and should) be afforded freedom to express that otherness as they see fit. The answer to the Elordi-not-being-a-gypsy conundrum might be found in what former Heathcliff Tom Hardy did with Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. “Bane, quintessentially, is Latinx in origin and I’m not,” Hardy told Wired when the Christopher Nolan film came out in 2012. “So I looked at the concept of Latin and found a man called Bartley Gorman, who’s a Romani gypsy. The king of the gypsies, in inverted commas, and a bare-knuckle fighter and a boxer.” He remoulded the movie’s villain to fit an image that he could pull off, and his accent and portrayal garnered plaudits.
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