Jacob Elordi hit the Berlin Festival on Saturday with Justin Kurzel‘s WWII drama The Narrow Road to the Deep North, in which he plays a medical officer in a Japanese prisoner of war camp on the Thailand-Burma railway line.
Elordi and his fellow cast members addressed the challenge of losing significant amounts of weight for their roles.
The Saltburn and Priscilla star was surprisingly upbeat about the experience, suggesting camaraderie among the cast had helped him get through the ordeal.
“It was a very calming experience to do it with all the lads. I think there was something quite profound that happened in that it wasn’t a complete torture,” he said.
“There was a peace that sort of came over all of us when we were in the camps, and you reach a level of love that goes beyond what you’re used to in your everyday because everything gets stripped away, and you come down to the bare bones of, ‘Is my mate okay Am I okay? How can I help? Do you want a jelly bean?’,” he said.
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“You’re watching each other and you’re taking care of each other. So it becomes quite primal, and I’m just really grateful to have shared that with these lads and the other boys… it was a really beautiful experience.”
Elordi plays Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor whose all-too-brief love affair with his uncle’s wife, Amy Mulvaney (Odessa Young), shaped his life.
Told over multiple time periods, the five-part follows Dorrigo as a Far East prisoner of war during the construction of the Burma Railway. Decades later, he finds his growing celebrity at odds with his feelings of failure and guilt.
The show – the first two episodes of which are showing as a special gala screening stars – marks a return to Australia for Kurzel, after the U.S.-set neo-Nazi thriller The Order, and Elordi.
“It was a dream come true, and it was a filmmaking experience that I haven’t quite had in my life. And honestly, like long live Australian cinema, it is truly a beautiful thing, and I hope to spend a lot of my time there making pitches,” said Elordi.
The post Jacob Elordi Talks Extreme Weight Loss On Burma POW Camp Drama ‘The Narrow Road To The Deep North’: “It Was A Very Calming Experience” appeared first on Deadline.
