Wuthering Heights: The Body Doubles Behind Emerald Fennel's Hit
In a competition for the most unusual job interview question, Bo Ponomari takes some beating.
"Do you have a hairy back?"
That's what the Ukrainian actor and body double, who also worked with Pedro Pascal in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, was asked before securing his role in Wuthering Heights as Elordi's stand-in. Despite being nine inches shorter than the famously tall star, producers considered Ponomari's physique similar enough to cast him as a double.
He tells Newsbeat he spent about an hour in makeup having prosthetic scars applied to his back, and recalls director Fennell carefully checking to ensure they matched Elordi's. On-set, Ponomari's job involved helping crews test camera angles, lighting, and providing alternative shots when Elordi was busy filming other scenes. However, he confesses he has no idea whether the back viewers saw on-screen in the final cut belonged to him.
Ponomari says the final product can be a "mixture of everything," with some scenes featuring the main actor, while others are a stunt performer or body double. He explains that big film productions are divided into a first unit and a second unit. "First unit is when you have the actor doing very important scenes like dialogue scenes, close-up scenes of his face, emotional stuff. And then you have second unit that does stunts or anything that does not necessarily need to involve an actor. That's when the body doubles, hand doubles, back doubles come in handy."
The process helps film crews stay on schedule and be cost-effective, but doubles can also be used when actors can't or don't wish to do a scene. Ponomari says, "You have some actors that [for] religious reasons, or they have personal reasons, they just don't want to do this, and that's absolutely fine. You have a division of people, actors, doubles that are willing to do that."
But, believe it or not, Ponomari's stand-in role might not have been the most surprising on the Wuthering Heights set. Lucy London, 25, acted as a double for a 14-year-old during filming due to strict rules around the length of time child actors can work and her 5ft (1.5m) height. In Wuthering Heights, she took on the role of young Cathy, played by teenager Charlotte Mellington. London says stepping into a child's shoes can be liberating, as adults overthink their perception, while children don't. She finds it fun and liberating to be a child for a day on a movie set.
It's no secret that stunt performers often take on the more dangerous moments where a lead actor could get hurt. Nikita Mitchell, a British stunt performer, acted as a stand-in for Margot Robbie on the set of Wuthering Heights after working together on 2023's Barbie. Mitchell says doubles sometimes train with stars for weeks or months to mimic their movements perfectly on camera. She describes Robbie as "quite brave" about doing her own stunts. However, Mitchell did step in during some of Wuthering Heights' dicier scenes to ensure the star's safety, including a scene where Robbie's character Cathy is on the edge of a cliff and another where she gets thrown into a tree by Heathcliff. Mitchell was on hand to test the harness and wires beforehand and help ensure Robbie's safety.
But she also literally took the fall for Robbie during a scene where Cathy tumbles from a wall when she's spotted scoping out the grounds of a mansion owned by her future husband, Edgar Linton. Mitchell says the "eight to 10ft" (2.4m to 3m) fall didn't worry her, as she's tackled 150ft (46m) cliff drops - on wires - in the past. Like Ponomari, she finds it "disappointing" when audiences never see a scene she's worked on but agrees it's "just part of the game." Whether they make the cut or not, stunt actors and body doubles, who are compensated by the day, still get paid for their time.
