Jacob Elordi has tickled fans by revealing he practised his Yorkshire accent for Wuthering Heights in the bath.
The 28-year-old actor stars opposite Margot Robbie, 35, in director Emerald Fennell’s bold ‘sadomasochistic’ take on the classic Emily Brontë novel as the tortured romantic hero Heathcliff.
At the London premiere on Thursday night, the Australian Oscar nominee spoke about how he perfected the distinct sounds of this UK Northern accent.
‘I just practise it in the bath, over and over and over and over,’ he told BBC News. ‘I like the ‘meks’ and the ‘teks’, instead of take. I like the M-E-K, T-E-K.’
In the story, Heathcliff is taken in as an orphan and named by Mr Earnshaw (Martin Clunes) and his daughter Cathy (Robbie); Adolescence star Owen Cooper plays the younger version of the character with his own Warrington accent.
However, this is not the first time we’ve heard Euphoria star Elordi tackle the dulcet tones of Yorkshire as that is how his creature in Frankenstein ends up sounding as he learns to talk.
The actor went straight from the set of Guillermo del Toro’s gothic adaptation to that of Fennell’s, admitting he even got a bit confused by the change himself as he started work on Wuthering Heights.
‘It was one of my first scenes. The other actor said something, and I went ‘Wwooouuuugh!’,” Elordi laughingly admitted to Variety as he recreated his character’s initial vocal response.
‘Because I had learned to respond to everything with a grunt. Something was still there.’
In Frankenstein, he portrays the creation of the titular Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) in del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, which, likewise with Wuthering Heights, made adventurous choices that deviated from the original with its story and design.
In a press conference attended by Metro at Venice Film Festival, where the Netflix movie premiered in August, Elordi first spoke about attempting a Yorkshire accent – and why he was inspired to do so.
He confirmed that the distinct flatter, shorter vowel sounds heard in words he speaks as the creature like ‘blood’ and ‘pumping’ were deliberately Yorkshire-tinged.
‘David Bradley, who plays the blind man, is from that part of the world – so when the creature learns to speak, there are little bits and bobs [in there],’ he explained at the time, of his character’s voice.
He also appeared surprised and delighted – alongside filmmaker del Toro – that British journalists had been able to pick up on that from a first viewing.
‘I’m glad you noticed it, that’s very cool,’ the Narrow Road to the Deep North actor added.
Veteran performer Bradley, 83, was born in York and previously played Geppetto in del Toro’s Oscar-winning animation Pinocchio in 2022.
Elordi only had three weeks to prepare for the role after replacing original actor Andrew Garfield in the part, but it appears it has had a profound impact on him.
Are you looking forward to Wuthering Heights?
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Yes, I can't wait to see it, it looks so exciting!
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No, I'm really anxious about the changes
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I'm reserving judgement either way until I've seen it
Discussing why this interpretation of playing Frankenstein’s monster – far removed from Boris Karloff’s version for Universal horror movies in the 1930s – appealed to him ahead of the film’s release, Elordi said the creature was ‘more me than I am’.
‘The reason I was drawn to it, is it’s a vessel that I can put every part of myself into, everything that’s unconscious from the moment I was born to being here with you today, all of it is in that character. And in so many ways, the creature that’s on screen in this movie is the purest form of myself. He’s more me than I am,’ he shared.
‘As a performer, if you can achieve that in something that you think you’re going to get lost in, if you can find yourself in a character that you plan to get lost in, I think that’s a really beautiful thing that can happen – and that’s what happened to me. I’m only realising that now, in hindsight.’
He has since been nominated for his first Academy Award for this performance, in the best supporting actor category.
In terms of appearance, his creature was also a totally new design from acclaimed horror auteur del Toro, who wanted to focus on the character as ‘a newborn’, and took inspiration from the look of alabaster statues.
‘A lot of the interpretations of the creature visually are almost like accident victims – and I wanted beauty,’ he explained, clarifying that a rule he put in place was ‘no stitches’.
‘Victor is an artist, and if you’ve been dreaming of this for 20 years, he would make a perfect, beautiful thing. We based the hair on phrenology diagrams in the 1800s and the body, we tried to make sense of the lines of cutting with surgery, but also beauty.’
On tackling the main part, a mad scientist who is interpreted here as more of an artist, Isaac revealed he was still struggling to believe it had happened as ‘it just seemed like such a pinnacle’.
‘Guillermo said, “I’m creating this banquet for you, you just have to show up and eat”, and that was the truth. There was a fusion – I just hooked myself into Guillermo, and we flung ourselves down the well.’
Turning to pay tribute to his director, the 46-year-old added: ‘It really is a testament to how much you were personal and poured your heart into it, and that allowed all of us to want to do the same thing.’
Pan’s Labyrinth filmmaker del Toro described his passion for the story of Frankenstein – and quest to make his own adaptation – as ‘a religion for me’.
‘I was raised very Catholic and I never quite understood the saints. And then when I saw Boris Karloff on the screen, I understood what a saint or a messiah looked like. I’ve been following the creature since I was a kid, and I always waited for the movie to be done in the right conditions, both creatively and in terms of achieving the scope that it needed for me to make it different, to make it at a scale that you could reconstruct the whole world.’
‘And now I’m in postpartum depression,’ he joked of having achieved his childhood goal.
Wuthering Heights releases in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13. Frankenstein is streaming exclusively on Netflix now.
A version of this article was first published on August 30, 2025.
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