Jacob Elordi plays a celebrated World War II hero in the new limited series The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
The show, which premieres Friday on Prime Video, follows Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrigo Evans, played by Elordi, who is haunted by his experience as a prisoner in a Japanese war camp.
The story is a distinctly Australian one, which means Elordi got to speak in his real-life accent for the role. He tells ABC Audio not hiding behind an American accent this time around "was actually really scary."
"I didn't have any kind of gauge for what that would sound like," Elordi said. "You know when you record your voice and you hear it back and it's like nails on a chalkboard? I could really hear my voice because I didn't have the wall of an accent or a real specific character to hide behind. So I kept hearing myself and when I heard myself, I just thought I was a phony."
Everything changed after he began filming the project, however. The actor said he began to love "the immediacy of acting in your own accent."
"It was an acting awakening, just kind of how how much easier thoughts kind of funneled into my head and how much more naturally they came off my tongue," Elordi said. "I was like, 'Oh, it could have been this easy the whole time,' you know?"
Elordi said getting to work on an Australian project was so exciting.
"It's something that I've wanted to do for a really long time. And I'm incredibly proud of it and I'm glad that it was on something that was as beautiful a piece of work as I think this show is," Elordi said. "It's nice to do something of substance and that has meaning to me at home."