Margot Robbie dances her way to box office highs with Wuthering Heights

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Nell Geraets

Before Margot Robbie, there was Kate Bush. It’s rare to read the phrase “Wuthering Heights” without immediately hearing the British singer’s haunting vocals and seeing her, dressed head-to-toe in red, twirling around the moors in her iconic 1978 music video.

This was clearly the case for Robbie, who performed Bush’s entire dance – from the quasi-zombie walk to the graceful balletic kick – while on-set of Emerald Fennell’s provocative Wuthering Heights adaptation.

Too hot, too greedy: Kate Bush is original Wuthering Heights royalty.YouTube

A video of the Australian actress prancing around the windy Yorkshire moors was shared on Instagram by Channel 10 entertainment editor Angela Bishop (who received the footage from “Wuthering Heights” dialect coach William Conacher). While perhaps not quite as evocative as the singer’s original version – it’s Kate Bush, after all – Robbie carefully recreated each move while mouthing along to the lyrics.

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The video came shortly after an interview with Bishop, Robbie and Jacob Elordi (who plays Heathcliff), in which Elordi confirmed how familiar his co-star was with the choreography.

“It’s incredible to watch. [She’s] in this red Cathy dress – an incredible image,” Elordi said, adding that he had 16-millimetre footage of her performance as proof.

Robbie then backed it up: “On the last day, we’d blast Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. We were standing on cliffs, the moors in Yorkshire. And we’d all just start dancing with the crew. I do know the dance.”

Bishop begged them to release the footage, to which Robbie said, “one day, we’ll see”.

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The renowned song played a significant role for the crew on set. In an interview with UK magazine Attitude earlier this month, Robbie, said “you can’t make Wuthering Heights without listening to [the song]“, adding that Bush is “the soundtrack to [her] life”.

Meanwhile, Fennell’s divisive film has bewitched the global box office after just five days in theatres, grossing over $117 million – about $4 million more than its estimated production budget. It topped the Australian box office, raking in $6.07 million in its opening weekend. Deadline partially attributed this local success to the Australian stars’ “home field advantage”.

The film enjoyed the biggest opening of the year so far despite its rather divided critical reception. Based on Fennell’s own interpretation of Emily Brontë’s 179-year-old novel, the movie has been described as both a bold reinvention and a hollow misfire, with some even using Bush’s popular lyrics (“too hot, too greedy”) to critique it.

Bush wrote the Wuthering Heights track, her debut single, when she was just 18. It quickly became an unexpected hit, topping the charts and becoming the first song written and performed by a female artist to reach the top spot in the UK. It has stood the test of time, largely thanks to her high-pitched, haunting vocals – used to evoke Cathy’s ghostly nature – and the music video, which has since been parodied and even inspired an annual event called “The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever” where, like Robbie, fans recreate her somewhat bizarre dance.

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Nell GeraetsNell Geraets is a Culture and Lifestyle reporter at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.

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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au