Anna Lambe Brings the Arctic to Netflix With ‘North of North’

In the first scene of “North of North,” star Anna Lambe puts Netflix‘s new comedy series on the map: “Think of the furthest place north you’ve ever been. Now keep going.”

The show, which was billed as the first big-budget comedy series set in the Arctic, was broadcast in Canada at the beginning of the year ahead of its Netflix debut on Thursday. Lambe leads the charming series as Siaja, a young mother who aims to reinvent herself within her tight-knit small town after a public breakup.

“I am a modern Inuk woman. Whatever that means,” says Lambe, in character as Siaja, establishing the crux of the show during her opening monologue. “This year, I’m finally putting myself first.”

As the show’s audience expands beyond Canada with the streaming release, the 24-year-old actress reflects on the show’s response closer to home. Lambe has found the response from young Indigenous women particularly rewarding, who have been “ inspired and empowered by Siaja’s story and her ability to keep trying despite failing — and despite what people might say about you and how they might treat you,” says Lambe from her current home in Ottawa, Canada. “It’s exactly what I want as a still-young Inuk woman. I feel very proud and honored to have been able to share that story with people, and to be able to make them feel that way.”

“North of North” was produced by the team behind Lambe’s debut film “Grizzlies.” Early in pre-production, Lambe ran into one of the showrunners in Los Angeles, who described the project as “Sex Education” meets “Sex Lives of College Girls.” A few years later, Lambe saw the casting announcement for the show, which was billed as an “Arctic comedy series.”  

“ I remember reading the article and thinking, I don’t care what it is, it doesn’t have to be a role, it doesn’t have to be a lead — I just wanna be a part of this show about a young woman in the North,” says Lambe, acknowledging that she knew the show had the potential to “change the landscape of Arctic representation in film and television.” After a long audition process, Lambe received the call that she’d been cast as Siaja, marking her first lead role.

The show filmed on location in Iqaluit, the capital city of Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost territory. Lambe moved back in with her parents during filming, and credits the overall sense of community that the production cultivated.

“One of the big issues of filming a show like this in the north is that the north doesn’t have the proper infrastructure to support a production of this size in terms of equipment and sets,” says Lambe. “You can’t just go down the street and buy something when you need it. You can’t just go and get another dolly or another camera,” she adds. “So in times of dire needs, the production would call out to the community and be like, ‘can you provide this? Does anybody have this? Is there anybody available to do background today?’ And people always, always, always showed up for us and supported us, and were so excited about the show and wanted to be a part of it in any way that they could.”

Local Inuit fashion designers feature heavily in the show’s costume design, and many of the outfits featured on-screen — parkas, seal skin boots, earrings — were handmade, including Siaja’s dramatic “Bridgerton Princess” costume in episode six.

“She’s a girl who loves pretty things. She’s a girl who loves nice things. And that’s so true for so many Inuit women,” says Lambe. “As an Inuk woman that loves my fancy parkas and loves my kamiks and loves my earrings, it was such a joy to come to set,” she adds. “To see how they [the costume department] were sourcing them from the community and supporting people and really giving back to the local economy was really exciting.”

Lambe was introduced to acting as a teenager when she participated in a local workshop that culminated in an audition for “Grizzlies,” a sports drama about a youth lacrosse team in Nunavut. She ended up booking the role, and left high school for two months to film. A few years later, Lambe was in her freshman year of college, studying International Development, when “Grizzlies” premiered at TIFF. 

“I got to see it and was really deeply impacted by the film personally, because it relates to so many things that I grew up with and saw,” says Lambe of the film, which was based on a true story and calls attention to the high suicide rate within Indigenous Arctic communities. “One of the most important things to me has always been how to empower community. I went to university with the hope of being able to go back to my community and find a way to deal with things like the housing crisis and food insecurity and the suicide rates in the north. And I thought that going to university was maybe the only way to do that,” she adds. “Seeing the impact of ‘Grizzlies’ and the conversations that we were able to have, and the places we were able to have them, I realized that film and television is such a powerful medium for change and for telling stories.” 

Lambe went on to earn a Canadian Screen Award nomination for her role in the film, and soon after booked her first series role, “Trickster.” “I was like, oh, OK — maybe I’m not so bad at this.  Maybe there’s something there,” she says of deciding to pivot her focus to acting.

Last year, Lambe starred in the fourth season of the critically acclaimed crime series “True Detective.” Shortly before the Netflix release of “North of North,” Lambe was getting ready to head out to film another project, and was recently announced as among the cast of Brat Pitt-led disaster-action film “The Heart of the Beast.” Set in Alaska, the film will be directed by David Ayer and produced by Damien Chazelle.

Although drawn to “really dramatic dark projects,” Lambe mulled her interest in exploring other genres on the heels of her comedic turn in “North of North” — she hopes that there will be a rom-com, or a Western, in her future. “I have this kind of funny dream of riding a horse at dusk through wheat fields, and my hair is blowing in the wind,” she says, adding that she’s “open to whatever comes next.”

“It’s just nice to see what the journey looks like with every project,” she adds.