In this series, the actor plays Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrigo Evans, an Australian Army medical officer who becomes a Japanese prisoner of war. He and his fellow Aussie soldiers are tasked on building the infamous Thailand-Burma Death Railway, all while trying to survive the brutality of the jungle and their savage captors.

It didn’t take much convincing for Elordi to get on board. Since his teenage years, he had always wanted to work with Aussie filmmaker Justin Kurzel, who directed the series as well as other films such Assassin’s Creed, Macbeth and the award-winning Aussie 2011 film Snowtown.

So when Kurzel reached out in a letter (which the actor has since framed), asking him to star in the series, Elordi told his agent to secure the role.

“It was funny because he had asked me to do it and I was calling my agent, ‘We need to respond right now because I don’t want to lose this.’ Like in case I was going to do something wrong in that space of time,” Elordi laughs.

“The major thing was, it sounds simple, but was that he was Australian,” he adds of what sets Dorrigo apart from his previous roles. “It kind of felt like cutting out the middle man a little bit. There’s an immediateness to it and something that comes naturally when you’re playing an Australian character.”

And with war comes love. Combating the heavy scenes depicting that period is the secret love affair between Dorrigo and his uncle’s wife, Amy, played by Odessa Young.

“That’s what I loved so much about that part of the story was just how unrestricted and liberated and freeing it was for these people,” Young tells news.com.au of their characters.

“I think both Dorrigo and Amy, in their regular lives, feel quite restricted by their circumstances. And I think they both find a lot of liberation in knowing each other.”

Like Elordi, the series marks Young’s return to Australia. The 27-year-old also resides in the US for her acting career – she moved to LA in 2016, the day after her 18th birthday, then two years later relocated to New York where she currently lives.

Since moving stateside, Young has starred on Stephen King’s sci-fi series The Stand opposite Whoopi Goldberg and the biographical crime drama The Staircase with Colin Firth.

“It’s one of the best case scenarios of getting to come home and work on something,” she says of starring in The Narrow Road to the North. “It really feels like the best of the best are involved in this production.”

“I was already a very big fan of Justin’s and desperately wanting to work with him and did what I thought was the worst audition of my life for it and booked it.”

However, after playing only British and American characters since moving to the US, Young says it was refreshing to play an Aussie in an Aussie series. But first she had to relearn the accent.

“It’s embarrassing. In all honesty, I did do some accent sessions,” she confesses. “I think it was kind of get me back into the routine. For the last however long, I’ve either done British or American [accents], so I haven’t worked in an Australian accent for a long time.”

“This is also a period piece. People spoke differently, people held themselves differently. I wanted to bring some of that reality into the way that I spoke as well.”

Both Young and Elordi – who has also starred in the hit HBO series Euphoria and the popular Netflix film series The Kissing Booth – are extremely proud of this series for the Australian story it tells and the mateship they felt on set with their co-stars, including Simon Barker, Thomas Weatherall, Heather Mitchell and Olivia DeJonge, who plays Elordi’s wife Ella.

“I hope [audience] have a satiating experience because there’s so much nonsense that’s pumped out on streaming services and in cinemas now,” Elordi says. “And my hope is that [this series] offers some kind of respite from that.”

“It was a profoundly moving experience and we all kind of bonded in a really deep way over the whole thing. It was wonderful.”

The Narrow Road to the Deep North premieres on Friday, April 18 on Prime Video