BERLIN (AP) — Jacob Elordi is gearing up for one more busy 12 months.
He’ll quickly be seen in Guillermo del Toro’s much-anticipated “Frankenstein” and is at present filming Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.” But during a recent interview in Berlin, Elordi, complete with wild curly Heathcliff hair and sideburns, had his upcoming Australian TV series “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” on the thoughts.
Fellow Australian Justin Kurzel directs the variation of Richard Flanagan ’s Man-Booker prize-winning novel of the identical title, which tells the story of medical officer Dorrigo Evans (Elordi). Evans was pressured to work on the Thai-Burma railway within the jungle of a Japanese prisoner of conflict camp throughout World Struggle II.
Kurzel and Flanagan are mates from Tasmania, the place they each reside, and celebrated in London collectively when Flanagan gained the esteemed literary award. However in true Australian type, the concept for the TV sequence got here from a chat again residence at a barbeque, Kurzel says with a chuckle.
Fittingly, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” is displaying in Australia on Prime Video beginning on April 18 earlier than reaching Sky and WOW in Germany this summer time. (Extra territories have but to be introduced.)
The story spans three completely different timelines — pre-, throughout and post-war — and three completely different factors of view, which begin to merge and overlap because the story unfolds.
Though the sequence is in regards to the braveness and horrors of conflict, a love story is at its coronary heart. By way of his ordeal, the married Dorrigo is each sustained and stricken by recollections of a love affair he had together with his uncle’s spouse Amy, his one real love, performed by Odessa Younger.
Whereas Kurzel describes the romance as “the absolute spirit of the whole series,” Elordi admits he was initially “pretty frightened” about bringing it to the display screen.
“I was worried that it would kind of overtake the elements of the novel that kind of interested me, which was the war parts,” says Elordi.
However the way in which Kurzel shot and directed these scenes prompted a change of coronary heart.
“He allowed us this space for it to be incredibly raw and real and gentle and it ended up becoming my sort of favorite part of the filmmaking process because we shot it in halves.”
Kurzel says he had by no means executed a love story and was ”extraordinarily cautious and cautious and fiercely inquisitive about what that will be with Jacob and Odessa.”
With the love story shot first, Elordi, who had a serious 12 months in 2023 after starring as Elvis Presley in “Priscilla” and Fennell’s “Saltburn,” provides he was higher in a position to form his portrayal of the haunted Dorrigo, when it got here time to movie the Japanese POW scenes.
“Being able to have those memories while we were shooting the camps, of shooting with Dess (Odessa Young) and Olivia (DeJonge), was a core part of the performance, which goes back to Richard’s book. The two just inform each other, like it’s a whole life.”
Casting Elordi was straightforward for Kurzel who stated he “knew right away” that he was proper for the position however provides {that a} particular dedication and focus was wanted from all of the actors solid as troopers, as they underwent dramatic weight reduction to play prisoners of conflict.
“The crew looking at them coming on set … there’s a ‘Wow, we’d better be on today because we can see kind of what these boys have done for it.’ So that was really, really powerful,” Kurzel says.
Their dedication allowed him to shoot these brutal scenes in a really grounded and truthful means.
“These boys are incredible, but they’re incredibly tired. They’re kind of wasted away, you know, the level of sort of focus, you can’t have it for the whole day. So you’ve got to be really kind of precise about that.”
Elordi says that the six-week weight reduction journey was a cumulative effort that additionally included the background actors. “Seeing that many, especially young people put that effort into something. It was genuinely amazing to see that when we came back from that break, it was like, oh, my God.”
This sequence marks the second time Elordi has co-starred with an older model of himself in the identical film.
Final 12 months Elordi performed a younger model of Richard Gere in Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” and on this sequence Irish actor Ciarán Hinds performs him in his later years, trying again on his time within the conflict. Requested who he wish to see play an older model of himself subsequent, Elordi laughed and advised “Meryl Streep.”
And whereas followers look ahead to that collaboration, Elordi says he is not going to be letting the inevitable rise in fame section him.
“I get to make movies a lot, and that is my dream so I am probably the luckiest man alive.”
