The week we spoke with “North of North” star Anna Lambe, the Iqaluit-set show cracked the Netflix global top 10. “I get messages from Poland, from Australia, from Brazil,” said Lambe. “It all feels like, wow, look at our little show go.”
It’s going: The international breakout hit co-produced by APTN, CBC and Netflix, which happens to be Netflix’s first original Canadian series, has just been renewed for a second season.
In the show, the 24-year-old Inuk actor plays the indefatigable, complicated, impossible-not-to-cheer-on Siaja. She leaves her husband, launches into a new career, has a near-death experience during a seal hunt and accidentally makes out with a man who may or may not be her long-lost father — and that’s just in the first episode.
Lambe, a familiar face from her role alongside Jodie Foster in “True Detective,” learned about “North of North” well before its inception, at an airport. She ran into Inuk filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, who was returning home from pitching the concept to streaming studios in Los Angeles. “She said it was like ‘Sex Education’ or ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls.’ It’s fun, but it’s also got real bite to it,” said Lambe.
She was immediately taken by the idea, and stayed on “high alert” for the audition call once the show was greenlit. “It felt so real from the moment that I read [the script]. This is so true to my experience as an Inuk woman, to the women that I grew up around,” Lambe said. She knew she needed to be a part of the show — in fact, as the audition process for the lead role dragged on, she told her agent that she’d be happy to audition for any other parts as well, just to be involved.
“They kept assuring me I was fine, but I was like, ‘You don’t get it. It’s going to change the landscape of film and television in the Arctic. It’s going to change the way that we’re represented on an international scale,’” said Lambe. This was prescient: the show has been hailed for its authentic portrayal of life in Canada’s Far North and modern Inuk culture.
But when making the show, Lambe said she didn’t really feel pressure to represent an entire culture’s experiences. “Because the show was already so accurate to my own experiences and what I know of the North, there was never any pressure about getting that right. We’re just representing ourselves in the most authentic way,” she said. “It’s not pressure on us to tell the story properly. It’s a pressure for people to be receptive to it, and to see us as we truly are.”
There can be a pressure to being held up as an “inspiration,” though. “I can only represent myself and my experience of being a young kid that grew up in Iqaluit and now has this kind of funny life,” Lambe said.
According to director Zoe Hopkins, Lambe brought a unique magic to the show. “Anna brings such a vulnerability and honest presence to her work. She opens her heart and lived experience to her character and lets the viewer into something special,” said Hopkins. “Through her portrayal of Siaja, we get to experience heartache, humility and curiosity. And it’s a huge delight to watch.”
Hopkins directed the episode where Lambe and her co-star Dan Jeannotte play out a comedic love scene. “I got to add my own choreography, and when I told them my ideas for how to navigate through the scene with really specific physical beats, Anna would gasp and throw her head back and laugh,” said Hopkins. “It was so joyous to see her be unafraid and just give herself to the hilarity of it all. Other performers would maybe want to hang on to some vanity, but Anna and Dan went for it and we all laughed after every cut.”
During filming, the crew tried to ensure the local community felt involved without disrupting people’s daily lives. In fact, “North of North” helped bring film and television production infrastructure, including a studio, to the Iqaluit area. “I hope that is a legacy, and we get to continue filming things up North, because they really did prove that it is possible to make something of that size up there,” Lambe said.
Everything Lambe has done, including her Canadian Screen Award-nominated performance as a missing Mohawk woman in “Three Pines,” hosting the doc series “Warrior Up!” to spotlight Indigenous youth changemakers, and writing, directing and producing a short film about grief, has been about advocacy in some way. “That’s what drives me,” she said. “It’s community and wanting better for community, and dreaming bigger. That is the engine behind it all.”
Lambe has big dreams for her future — she’d love to do a horror movie, and more writing and directing — but her litmus test for success will remain the same. “I’m always waiting to see what my dad said about what I do,” she said. “He’s always very supportive, so I don’t know why I expect anything different.”
Recently, he and her mom travelled to New York, to see their daughter on the “North of North” billboard in Times Square. “For me to see them see the billboard, and their pride and excitement, was very validating,” she said.
They’d visited New York as a family when Lambe was a child, and she’d felt overwhelmed by the size and bustle of the city. “And now to be back there with them and we’re looking at a billboard for a show that was shot in the town we live in? That was so surreal.”
