Emerald Fennell: Adapting “Wuthering Heights” & Crushing Eggs | The Run-Through with Vogue

On Sunday afternoon—just hours before the Super Bowl—members of the Vogue Book Club gathered at the SVA Theatre in Chelsea for a special preview screening of Wuthering Heights, followed by an insightful conversation between director Emerald Fennell and Chloe for The Run-Through. Drawing on literary scholarship and her own teenage memories of the book, Fennell chose to lean into its sadomasochistic undercurrents. As she explained, “There’s a quote from Daphne du Maurier in which she describes Wuthering Heights as a kind of sexless book. But I’ve never experienced it that way. That’s part of the novel’s magic—everyone who reads it takes away something slightly different. For me, the sexual power dynamics are extremely explicit.” Fennell’s version makes several notable departures from the classic text. Isabella Linton (played by Alison Oliver) emerges as a more dynamic character (Fennell joked that she herself is “more of an Isabella than a Cathy”), and the adaptation omits both Nelly’s first-person narration and the novel’s second half (William Wyler did it first!). Perhaps the most memorable addition, however, is the motif of crushed eggs beneath bed sheets—an inside joke between Heathcliff and Cathy. Fennell revealed that she volunteered to sit on the eggs herself during filming. 00:00 - Intro 00:30 - Love for Wuthering Heights 01:45 - Ghosts 03:04 - Power Dynamics 05:28 - 14-Year-Old Emerald 07:41 - Visuals 10:30 - Emerald’s Version of Wuthering Heights 11:4