How to forward API Response with the same HTTP Status Code and Body through Nginx reverse proxy to the Client

I am currently dockerizing an API developped in Laravel and I am using Nginx as a reverse_proxy, here is the conf.d file

server {
listen 80;
index index.php index.html;
root /var/www/public;
client_max_body_size 32M;

fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
proxy_intercept_errors on;

location / {
    try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
}

location ~ \.php$ {

    add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin http://foo.bar;
    add_header Access-Control-Max-Age 3600;
    add_header Access-Control-Expose-Headers Content-Length;
    add_header Access-Control-Allow-Headers Range;

    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_pass laravel:9000;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;

    internal;
}

I am getting the Internal server response bodies and 404 Not Found responses but the problem is that the HTTP Status Code is always 200. I need the HTTP Status Code to be sent as it is to the client making the request because I am using 401, 403 and others for the web app client application, like this

if ($isAuthenticated) {
   return $token
} else { 
   return response()->json(['error'='Unauthorized','attempts'=$number ],401);
}

Then the 401 Error is catched by Ajax to show a specific alert to the user. And Nginx is getting in the way of doing that with sending back always 200. I tried setting fastcgi_intercept_errors and proxy_intercept_errors on, but it still does not work. The image i am using is nginx:1.19.8-perl and I tried the nginx:1.17-alpine one. Is there any way I can do this ? Or probably I am using Nginx for the wrong purpose and there is a better reverse proxy for APIs ?