Jacob Elordi accidentally let out a grunt like Frankenstein’s monster when he started filming the period drama Wuthering Heights.
The Australian actor adopted a low, otherworldly voice to play Victor Frankenstein’s monstrous creation in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Gothic horror.
After production wrapped, Elordi moved on to play Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel. During the early days of the shoot, he momentarily forgot which character he was playing and was shocked when a deep, wounded groan escaped his mouth.
“It was one of my first scenes,” Elordi recalled with a laugh in an interview with Variety. “The other actor said something, and I went ‘Wwooouuuugh!’ Because I had learned to respond to everything with a grunt. Something was still there.”
To develop Frankenstein’s monster’s unusual speaking voice, the Euphoria actor listened to Mongolian throat singing, which he described as “guttural smooth chanting”.
He also practised the creature’s slow, unsteady walk and gestures in front of the mirror in his hotel room and wore false teeth while rehearsing his lines to get a feel for how they changed his speech.
As of his grunts early in the film, Elordi added, “It feels like it got hit in the head with a bat.”
The Priscilla star underwent up to 10 hours of make-up every day to transform into the monster, meaning he sometimes had to arrive at the make-up trailer at 10pm in order to be ready for the shoot the following morning.
Frankenstein will debut at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday before coming to Netflix in November.
Meanwhile, Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie as Catherine, will be released in February 2026.
