Who Cares What Margot Robbie's Husband Thinks Of Her 'Affair-Baiting' with Jacob Elordi?

Hotly anticipated and highly contentious, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights film adaptation has captured attention since the moment Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi were confirmed for the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff. With a press tour for the February 13 release underway, the initial dissatisfaction with the casting (which arose from Robbie’s age and Elordi’s race) has now given rise to another controversy of sorts as audiences wonder; What on earth is going on between Robbie and Elordi?

Like any Hollywood press tour, Robbie and Elordi are obligated to engage in a little bit of unadulterated praise for one another. However, if this were the showmance Olympics, these two would be going for gold.

Wearing matching rings engraved with the phrase, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” Robbie and Elordi are going head-to-head with heartfelt expressions of adoration. Robbie told Fandango that she felt “really unnerved and unmoored” whenever Elordi wasn’t around her on set. “I felt quite lost, like a kid without their blanket or something.”

Elordi added that the obsession was “mutual,” saying, “I think the thing is, regardless of plot or screenplay, if you have the opportunity to share a film set with Margot Robbie, you’re going to make sure you’re within 5 to 10 metres at all times.”

Then came Robbie’s revelation that, as Heathcliff, Elordi “filled [her] room with roses” while filming together on Valentine’s Day, and that Elordi’s gesture to shield her face from rain while shooting together was “the most romantic thing I have experienced.”

Yet, as each of these quotes made their rounds on social media, so too did a growing discontent towards their quasi-showmance. Instead of swooning, social media has largely rejected Robbie and Elordi’s attempts to convince us of their chemistry, leading to plenty of “affair-baiting” discourse as social media users criticize the pair’s attempt to sell their movie.

Of course, comments on videos of Elordi and Robbie’s interviews often include some variation of, “What does Margot’s husband think of all this?”

Robbie has been married to Tom Ackerley since 2016, and the pair welcomed their first child, a son, shortly before she started filming Wuthering Heights. As the lesser-known half of the couple, Ackerley likely won’t be doing a tell-all anytime soon. But if we had to guess, he’s probably doing just fine, given that he’s one of the film’s producers.

Of course, it would be easy to explain all the reasons why using a woman’s husband as a justification to question her working relationship with another man is misogynistic, but that would be a disservice to those credibly criticizing the marketing ploy at play here.

In the age of Don’t Worry Darling, Wicked and Marty Supreme, film press tours have become a form of theater in themselves. It’s not a stretch to guess that Ackerley and Robbie, who is also a producer of the film under their company, Lucky Chap, landed on this so-called “affair-baiting” strategy during a meeting with the Warner Bros. publicity department.

Naturally, the press tour has drawn comparisons to Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s antics during the filming and promotion of their 2023 release, Anyone But You. Their flirtatious interactions led to the demise of Powell’s three-year relationship, according to his then-girlfriend, Gigi Paris. Sweeney and Powell eventually admitted to deliberately fueling affair rumors in a 2024 interview with The New York Times.

Like Ackerley, Sweeney’s then-fiancé, Jonathan Davino, was a producer of that film.

To say that either Elordi or Robbie has directly insinuated that their relationship was anything other than professional would be as much of an exaggeration as saying that anyone actually thinks an affair took place.

Buying into a romance is a proven model of success for any good, horny piece of media, so convincing us of their off-screen bond may have felt like a logical path to promote a film about doomed lovers who can’t be together. But for whatever reason, whether it’s press tour fatigue or the skepticism Emily Brontë fans are feeling towards Fennell’s adaptation, this showmance just isn’t landing.