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Jacob Elordi has revealed he suffered a second-degree burn in a freak accident while filming Wuthering Heights.
The film’s director Emerald Fennell added that she was shocked to learn her leading man had been sent to hospital by the incident.
Elordi and Fennell, who worked together on the divisive 2023 hit Saltburn, have reunited for the filmmaker’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 novel. Elordi plays Heathcliff, while Margot Robbie stars as Catherine Earnshaw.
In an interview with Esquire, Elordi explained that one of the film’s make-up artists, Siân Miller, had been designing the scars for Heathcliff’s back when she jokingly suggested that a method actor such as Daniel Day-Lewis would have provided his own wounds.
“She challenged me: ‘If Daniel Day-Lewis was playing Heathcliff, he would have come in with scars,’” recalled Elordi. “I said, ‘Well I’m going to go away and maim myself on the weekend to prove to you that I’m Heathcliff!’ That night I went home, and the house I was staying in had a steam shower: a brass knob that steam came from out of the wall.”
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Jacob Elordi was hospitalized with a second-degree burn while filming his new movie ‘Wuthering Heights’ (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
The actor went on to explain that he had sat on the floor of the shower to clean his feet. “The full story is that, when I was doing Frankenstein, I had so much make-up in my fingers and in my feet all the time, and I left it on for the whole shoot because I couldn’t be bothered washing it all off,” he said.
“As Heathcliff, I was covered in mange and dirt, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to do that again, I’m going to clean my feet properly every night and come in to work fresh the next day.’ So I went to clean my feet, and I leant back and my back seared into the steam knob and I stood up screaming; it tore up my back. When I went to work on Monday I had a second-degree burn.”
Fennell added that she learned of the injury in a message from one of the film’s producers, saying: “I think that was in the first week of shooting. I got a text from Josey McNamara, the producer, saying, ‘Jacob’s in hospital.’ Obviously I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s had a car accident,’ and then he was like, ‘He’s burnt his back in the shower.’ I was like, ‘You know what, Josey? Start with that.’”
When Fennel asked Elordi if he felt the injury he sustained was in “the spirit of Daniel Day-Lewis”, the actor replied: “It was actual Daniel Day-Lewis. In the shower.”
Wuthering Heights is set to be released on February 13.