Jacob Elordi talks weight loss and on-screen romance for 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North'

BERLIN (AP) — Jacob Elordi is gearing up for another busy year.

He'll soon be seen in Guillermo del Toro’s much-anticipated “Frankenstein” and is currently 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 mind.

Fellow Australian Justin Kurzel directs the adaptation of Richard Flanagan ’s Man-Booker prize-winning novel of the same name, which tells the story of medical officer Dorrigo Evans (Elordi). Evans was forced to work on the Thai-Burma railway in the jungle of a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II.

Kurzel and Flanagan are friends from Tasmania, where they both live, and celebrated in London together when Flanagan won the esteemed literary award. But in true Australian style, the idea for the TV series came from a chat back home at a barbeque, Kurzel says with a chuckle.

Fittingly, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” is showing in Australia on Prime Video starting on April 18 before reaching Sky and WOW in Germany this summer. (Additional territories have yet to be announced.)

The story spans three different timelines — pre-, during and post-war — and three different points of view, which start to merge and overlap as the story unfolds.

Although the series is about the courage and horrors of war, a love story is at its heart. Through his ordeal, the married Dorrigo is both sustained and tormented by memories of a love affair he had with his uncle’s wife Amy, his one true love, played by Odessa Young.

While Kurzel describes the romance as “the absolute spirit of the whole series,” Elordi admits he was initially “pretty frightened” about bringing it to the 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.

But the way Kurzel shot and directed those scenes prompted a change of 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 never done a love story and was ”extremely careful and cautious and fiercely curious about what that would be with Jacob and Odessa.”

With the love story shot first, Elordi, who had a major year in 2023 after starring as Elvis Presley in “Priscilla” and Fennell’s “Saltburn,” adds he was better able to shape his portrayal of the haunted Dorrigo, when it came time to film 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 easy for Kurzel who said he “knew right away” that he was right for the role but adds that a special dedication and focus was needed from all the actors cast as soldiers, as they underwent dramatic weight loss to play prisoners of war.

“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 very grounded and truthful way.

“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 loss journey was a cumulative effort that also 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 series marks the second time Elordi has co-starred with an older version of himself in the same movie.

Last year Elordi played a young version of Richard Gere in Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” and in this series Irish actor Ciarán Hinds plays him in his later years, looking back on his time in the war. Asked who he would like to see play an older version of himself next, Elordi laughed and suggested “Meryl Streep.”

And while fans wait for that collaboration, Elordi says he will not be letting the inevitable rise in fame phase him.

“I get to make movies a lot, and that is my dream so I am probably the luckiest man alive.”