Original-Cin Q&A: Anna Lambe on North of North’s Gift of Indigenous Visibility

By Bonnie Laufer

If you haven't yet fallen in love with the vibrant, messy, and fiercely resilient world of Ice Cove, the main setting of North of North, what are you waiting for? The hit comedy series — co-produced by CBC and Netflix in association with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network — has captured hearts globally, and a massive part of that soul comes from its incredible lead, Anna Lambe.

Lambe is breaking moulds, shifting the narrative on screen, and bringing an unmatched charm to the Arctic. She has also been seen recently on big screens, opposite Brad Pitt and a lovable German Shepherd named Uber in Heart of the Beast and Mikey Madison is Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning.

We caught up with Lambe to talk about what makes North of North so unique as it heads into Season 2, which premieres worldwide on Netflix November 5.

Anna Lambe, at right.

ORIGINAL-CIN: In Season 2 we see a bit of a different side of your character, Siaja. She still has that wonderful stubborn optimism, even when everything seems to be going wrong. How did you approach that balance between her confidence, her impulsiveness, and her very human tendency to make a mess of things?

ANNA LAMBE: Being able to play her is so much fun. It's doing all the things that I, as Anna, am scared of and having all the freedom and none of the accountability for any of the repercussions (laughs). I get to experience all the emotions and don't have to answer any of the questions.

O-C: The character really is quite relatable; we certainly do root for her.

AL: Playing Siaja, there's such a fun quirkiness to her. When I was building the character in Season 1, we were trying to figure out who she was and how she carries herself and how she behaves and optimism was the centre of it. That everything's going to be OK, tomorrow always comes, and the worst thing that can happen is somebody says no, or the worst thing that can happen is you fail and then you try again.

My approach to acting is very grounded, and that's kind of how I've always been. I've never gone to school for acting, and so it's just been my instinct. Siaja has quirky, funny, silly, stubborn characteristics. Just trying to take all those characteristics and ground them to make her such a real kind of tangible person is a lot easier.

O-C: What really comes across in the show is the sense of community. You're working with actors who I think have all become true friends on-screen and off.

AL: We hang out a lot on-set and a lot off-set, especially when we're filming in Iqaluit and everybody's living in the same hotel. I live at home with my parents, so I have a degree of separation. I love these people; we have all truly become so close. I want to hang out with these people all the time. We finish a 12-hour day on set, and then we go and do karaoke on a Friday night, and then we go and see each other again on Saturday.

We are that close, and we have that chemistry because we do really love each other, and we do really love spending time together. I think our friendships and our relationships are really rooted in a sense of safety and being seen and being heard and being given the freedom to play. I think we're so lucky to have that environment that we've been able to create this kind of relationship, so yeah, that kind of sense of community, love and friendship is because those are my people for real.

O-C: With this show, we get a great perspective of Inuit life that television rarely explores. What does that mean to you personally to be a part of a series like this, exploring these Inuit characters and having the world know what it's like?

AL: It's been such a gift to be able to be part of this show. I knew when we were casting back in 2023 that I wanted to be part of the show in any capacity because I really love our showrunners Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and I believe in everything they do. I know that everything that they do is going to be great because it's coming from them, it's going to be community-oriented and that it's going to be real and meaningful because it's coming from them.

I trust them implicitly and being part of this project brings me such joy and pride. I feel like this is a new era of storytelling, a new era of Indigenous storytelling. It’s a way for the world to see us in a way that they've never seen us before but it's the way that I've always known us to be, and so it's been the greatest gift to be a part of telling the story and a part of showing people who we truly are.

To have Inuit people everywhere feel seen and heard by this show and feel like they're represented accurately is wonderful. It’s beyond description but to feel empowered and emboldened by seeing characters that go through things that they go through, that they understand so well and being able to come out the other side having learned something or having changed or grown is something I am really grateful for.