Somewhere along the path between budding actor and Hollywood starlet, Olivia DeJonge lost her way.
The actor, who turns 27 on April 30, has spent the past decade building momentum on the A-list circuit: from landing a role in the teen movie The Sisterhood of Night in 2014, to becoming Priscilla Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s award-winning 2022 film Elvis.
But despite riding the highs of film-star success, DeJonge admits she had fallen into a creative slump. “I remember working on a short film when I was 11 and being obsessed with creating this world within a world, and the very meta feeling of it. I don’t know if it’s an age thing or becoming an adult, but [along the way] you lose that joy and that spark,” the actor says over Zoom from her home in Sydney.
Fortunately, a script landed in DeJonge’s lap that turned out to be the guiding force she needed: a screen adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s 2013 Booker Prize-winning novel, The Narrow Road
to the Deep North. “Working on Narrow Road felt like a return to my roots,” says DeJonge of the five-part miniseries.
“I needed that experience; it brought me back to myself.” Helmed by fellow Australian actors Jacob Elordi and Odessa Young, the story centres on an Australian war hero, Dorrigo Evans (played by Elordi), who is married to Ella (DeJonge) and engages in an affair with his uncle’s wife, Amy (Young).
Presented in three phases: before, during and after World War II, the series navigates forbidden love and the endurance of the human spirit after Australian soldiers are turned into prisoners of war.
The result is as cinematically beautiful as it is shell-shocking. Filmed across New South Wales with a largely all-Australian crew, the series is a melting pot for local creatives.
The show’s director, Justin Kurzel, who is no stranger to rich Australian storytelling (his 2021 film, Nitram, follows the lead up to the Port Arthur massacre, while his 2019 film, True History of the Kelly Gang, looks through the lens of infamous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly), was a dream collaboration for DeJonge.
“I’ve auditioned for Justin’s films in the past but had never booked a role,” she says. “The atmosphere that he creates is so special. He can conjure a performance in you that makes you feel like you’ve done it all on your own.”
DeJonge’s performance does brilliant justice to Ella, a deeply complex character. “Playing a woman involved in a love triangle, it was important to me that I gave her agency,” she explains. “[Dorrigo’s love interests] Ella and Amy come from two different worlds, but I think they both have this sense of inner strength and integrity.”
When playing a young woman from an affluent background, there’s a tendency for actors to make the character feel rigid. But DeJonge leant into a playfulness with her take on Ella, which you
also don’t often see in the betrayed wife character.
“I wanted to find that quality in her that sets her apart and makes her stand by Dorrigo for so many years … while still sort of maintaining her dignity.”
In his book, Flanagan asks what we want from our war stories. Arguing that while some people simply want tales of heroism and mateship, he sought to show “the truth”. Through gritty scenes
of abhorrent atrocity, a search of answers spurs the story along through each gripping episode.
“My attraction to the story was the complex character study of Dorrigo and his search for truth, both on the battlefield and in love,” explains DeJonge. “But, working on the project, I was moved by Ella’s search for truth, which serves to be a lifelong journey for her.”
Truth telling is something DeJonge has been ruminating on a lot lately. At the time of our chat, the actor has just opened her stage production of Picnic at Hanging Rock for the Sydney Theatre Company, a story that searches for the truth behind the disappearance of a group of girls while on a school trip.
In preparation for the production, DeJonge paid a visit to the real Hanging Rock, in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges. It was here that she learnt the landmark was actually a male initiation site for First Nations peoples. “I had no idea about the legend or the history of the site,” she says.
“The esoteric storyline of Hanging Rock is about our connection to the land, our disrespect of it, and how those five girls were inherently swallowed up by the land on this site that they weren’t supposed to be on. It’s such a shame that we’re not taught about the true history of these places.”
And what has the actor learnt about herself as she steps into this new era of self-discovery?
“I want to do more things that scare me and feel like a departure from myself,” she says. “I’ve played a lot of people who are close to me and I’m looking to expand beyond that. I’d love to play a woman with darkness behind her eyes. It feels not who I am but maybe who I am.”
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is streaming now on Prime Video
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