‘Wuthering Heights’ director Emerald Fennell says she cut footage of Margot Robbie’s ‘extremely hairy armpits’ out of the period drama, which she regrets. https://t.co/QZu3OQBynb
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) May 23, 2026
Thought you heard the last of Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’? Think again!
Fennell spoke about her recent adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel at the Hay Festival in Wales May 22 and revealed a scene that was cut in the final edit.
She explained that she gets distracted in period films when female characters adher to modern beauty stands. “Where are the razors that these women are using?” she said. “They’re all kind of hairless like eels. I’m like, ‘What’s going on? It’s completely mad.'”
Because of this, she wanted Margot Robbie to have extremely hairy armpits to reflect the late 1700s. Unfortunately, the scene where the audience sees Robbie’s pits was cut.
Elsewhere, Fennell discussed the scene where Cathy sticks her finger into the mouth of a fish. “I saw a fish in aspic and I thought, ‘I want to stick my finger in its mouth,'” she recalled. “And then I was like, ‘Well, I think if you were trapped and you were extremely sexually frustrated, the first thing you’d do is…'”
Lastly, she explained why “being cringe” is part of her artistic voice. “Now, in our culture, we are so phobic and terrified of being cringe, or being earnest, and so we’ve got this deadening ambivalence about everything,” she said. “And I feel, for me, I want to get in and go for it, and push it off a cliff.”
