Jacob Elordi brought the heat to snowy Berlin at the premiere of his new war-set miniseries “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” on Saturday night, debuting his latest adventure in facial hair: sideburns.
Gone was the beard that sent shockwaves through the internet in December when the actor served on the Marrakech Film Festival jury, though apparently it wasn’t all for nothing. Rocking an all-black outfit, which also showed off some chest hair, the “Euphoria” and “Saltburn” actor strutted his sideburns on the red carpet before entering the Zoo Palast alongside director Justin Kurzel and his castmates. With production set to start this year on Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” adaptation, where Elordi will play Heathcliff alongside Margot Robbie’s Catherine Earnshaw, it could be possible that the sideburns are part of his preparation for playing the brooding anti-hero.
Jacob Elordi attends the “The Narrow Road To The Deep North” premiere during the 75th Berlinale International Film Festival.
Getty Images
But excitement over a new Brontë film adaptation aside, Elordi’s stop in Berlin was to debut “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” in which he plays an Australian medical officer who becomes a Japanese POW during World War II. The only thing that gets him through the horrific atrocities he witnesses is the memory of a passionate affair with his uncle’s wife, Amy. The two episodes screened for Berlin attendees were equal parts harrowing and sexy, switching between gruesome shots of life in a POW camp — which had some in the audience covering their eyes — and the forbidden romance between Elordi’s Dorrigo and the much younger wife of his uncle, played by Odessa Young.
After appropriate applause Elordi, Kurzel and co. went up on stage for a Q&A, with the actor making sure he was the last one to arrive, motioning the rest of the crew to go in front of him. Asked about developing the central love story, Elordi said he and Young “just sat around a table and talked about love and talked about the script and laid on a couch and just sort of chopped it up, freely.”
“Between Odessa and I, we both sincerely love to act,” he continued. “So when you’re given that freedom and Justin kicks everyone out of the room and just rolls the camera in this beautiful hotel in the middle of nowhere alone, you get to just be.”
Some audience members began to leave during the Q&A, and one even interrupted producer Jo Porter as she spoke about how the series is “really powerful at the moment” because “we’re seeing war playing out.” A few moments later, a woman exiting the screening yelled out angrily that “nobody gives a shit” about Ukraine, seemingly upset that Porter had not mentioned the country by name. Audible groans followed.
After the Q&A finished, Elordi flashed an enthusiastic thumbs up to the crowd and said into the mic, “Thank you, thank you very much,” reminiscent of the famous musician he portrayed in Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla.” Though Elordi didn’t go full method to play Elvis like Austin Butler, it’s clear that parts of his characters stick with him — and if the sideburns are indeed for Heathcliff, hopefully they don’t.
