How Wuthering Heights’ Infamous Skin Room Was Created | Interview
ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to Wuthering Heights set decorator Charlotte Dirickx about Emerald Fennell’s romantic period drama movie. Dirickx discussed how they went about designing the movie’s infamous skin room, how the film’s visuals give off fairy tale vibes, and more.
“A bold and original interpretation of one of the greatest love stories of all time, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights stars Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, whose forbidden passion for one another turns from romantic to intoxicating in an epic tale of lust, love, and madness,” the synopsis reads.
Wuthering Heights will be available to own on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 5, 2025. It is currently available on digital platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and more.
Brandon Schreur: Wuthering Heights is obviously such an incredible and gorgeous-looking movie for so many reasons. Can you tell me a little about the role that you play in designing the look and the visuals for this movie as the set decorator? What are some of the main priorities and responsibilities that you’re tackling in this role when you’re working on the film?
Charlotte Dirickx: I work very closely with [production designer] Suzie [Davies]. And Suzie will have talked to Emerald in the very early stages. Then, Suzie and I sit down, and we start talking through things. It’s big at that point, and then slowly you just start drilling into each set while trying to keep this overall feeling for the whole look, which is what Suzie does so brilliantly. I sort of drill into the details of all the sets; like Isabella’s bedroom, or from the Grange to the Heights.
Then we slowly start — I go out and look for the things that I think Suzie and Emerald will like, and pull them all together. Then I sieve it, and Suzie sieves it before we show it to Emerald. We play around. I’m a magpie, and Emerald is, too, so she could never quite walk past the door of the set tech without coming in and going, ‘What’s that? What’s that? Oh, I love that.’
Totally. I’ve got to say, there are so many specific scenes and moments in this movie that I just love. Seeing it in a theater for the first time was just jaw-dropping, because there’s so much that this movie offers. I want to ask specifically about the skin room that we see towards the end; I think that’s where my mind was blown the most, because I don’t even know how you go about creating something like that. What was the process of making that, and what did you want it to convey to the audience?
I think that was very much, that was like Suzie — that room, when we read it, it talked about her freckles. In the beginning, we were thinking about just printing freckles on the fabric, and printing them on the carpet, and just making it sort of a freckle room. Suzie went one further with the latex, and then it really started to develop.
Then it was like, ‘Oh, can we get a photo of Margot Robbie’s veins?’ Then we talked to our great graphic designer, [Frances] Bennett. She started doing prints of it. Suzie was like, ‘Can we get some really wide latex?’ Which we couldn’t, but we managed to persuade them to print it a lot wider. Then, padding the fabric print of Margot’s skin and laying the latex over the top. Suzie made me stick little hairs on some of the moles.
And then, with the curtains, we actually had fake hair as the sort of fringing, all the way down. It’s sort of like a palomino pony. Emerald was sort of like, ‘Oh, no, too much,’ and I love it when she tells us too much, because she’s always pushing us and pushing us. So, it was really too much. We ended up plaiting the hair all the way on all the drapes as well, and using plaits as tie-backs. So it’s sort of like Cathy’s hair, but it’s gone Rapunzel.
As I said, there are so many specific things that I love in here, but also just the overall look of the movie conveys such a strong feeling. I’m curious what the starting point is for when you start working on this movie? You’re talking to Emerald, you’re talking to Suzie, and everyone else about how you want the movie to look and feel, but what are some of the most important aspects for the set and the visuals that you really want to make sure gets conveyed to the audience?
Yeah. We had this incredible moment really, really early on when Emerald came into the office and said Jacqueline Durran is going to talk through the costumes and where we’re at. Siân is coming in as well for hair and make-up. So there are five of us sitting in Emerald’s office very early on. Jacqueline had put up all her ideas. There were, like, things from Rapunzel and folktales. Things I hadn’t really thought of.
And, just, it was like a switch went off in my head, like, ‘Okay, it’s more like a fairy tale, in a way.’ That was quite a big open door moment for me. And just that collaboration with Jacqueline and Siân, with us in the art department and set tech. It was really, really fantastic. It really set us on our way, I think. From that moment on, it was great.
Is it daunting, at all, to tackle this kind of project? I mean, you’ve worked on movies in the past that I absolutely love and think are gorgeous. But Wuthering Heights is such a well-known book that so many people have read either in school or just for pleasure. I feel like everyone’s kind of read it at some point in their lifetime. So do you feel any added pressure knowing the source material is so well-known and that audiences are going to walk into this with a picture in their mind of what to expect it to look like?
I mean, I’ve got so much faith and trust in Emerald. I’m a massive Emily Brontë fan. My dad bought a house up in North Wales because it reminded him of Wuthering Heights and Brontë. I read the book at 14 as well, and I understand that some people did get upset by it, but I really felt like that spirit of Emily Brontë was there, with Emerald’s spirit, too. I love the thought of making a film through your eyes of being 14 when you read it.
It’s like with Ingmar Bergman when he did Cries and Whispers. That was just an idea he had in the 1970s, but that film was set in like the 19th century. There’s a release, as well, by making a film that’s so kind of original and creates its own world that’s super exciting.
Totally. One thing I was really struck by when I saw the movie for the first time was just how different-looking and different-feeling the Wuthering Heights estate is from Edgar’s mansion. Wuthering Heights, you guys capture the feeling so well where it’s so lonely and desolate, where Edgar’s home feels like somewhere I’d actually kind of want to live. Can you talk about how you went about designing these spaces and these sets to make them feel so different from each other? Was it hard to do two complete opposites like that?
I think it was really important to have Wuthering Heights — like, with both of those houses, we have a big backstory in our mind. Suzie wanted that feeling with Wuthering Heights that the family, the Earnshaws, have worked the land for hundreds of years. The land is really important to them, but they’re completely impoverished. And that it had been a working farm, but just how harsh it was. It is incredibly harsh working those farms up in Yorkshire.
I think the combination of the little jewelry box at the Grange, which is also suffocating. But I love that scene where Cathy is first climbing over the wall, she falls back down, and Edgar finds her. To me, it was just like an MGM classic kind of movie from the 50s. I just love that scene where she just lands. She sees both worlds, and she’s just seen a treasure box.
Thanks to Charlotte Dirickx for taking the time to discuss Wuthering Heights.
Source: Comingsoon.net