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 identify, 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 battle camp throughout World Battle II.
Kurzel and Flanagan are associates from Tasmania, the place they each dwell, and celebrated in London collectively when Flanagan received the esteemed literary award. However in true Australian type, the thought 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. (Further 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 concerning the braveness and horrors of battle, a love story is at its coronary heart. By means of his ordeal, the married Dorrigo is each sustained and plagued by reminiscences 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 best way 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 achieved a love story and was ”extraordinarily cautious and cautious and fiercely interested in what that might 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 simple for Kurzel who mentioned he “knew right away” that he was proper for the function however provides {that a} particular dedication and focus was wanted from all of the actors forged as troopers, as they underwent dramatic weight reduction to play prisoners of battle.
“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 manner.
“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 battle. Requested who he want to see play an older model of himself subsequent, Elordi laughed and urged “Meryl Streep.”
And whereas followers watch for that collaboration, Elordi says he won’t be letting the inevitable rise in fame part him.
“I get to make movies a lot, and that is my dream so I am probably the luckiest man alive.”
