The original post: /r/television by /u/True_Dot_9952 on 2026-03-14 04:20:26+00:00.

Anna Lambe, the breakout star of North of North—the global hit Canadian comedy series from APTN, CBC and Netflix that’s set in a small town in Canada’s Arctic where “everybody knows your business” (and Netflix’s first original Canadian series)—graces the cover of Canada’s The Globe and Mail Style magazine’s newest Spring 2026 issue.

The rising Inuk star from Iqaluit (the northernmost city in Canada) reflects on her acting journey, the impact her North of North lead character has had on global audiences and how her acting inspires her advocacy work.

You might recognize Anna from co-starring alongside Jodie Foster in HBO’s True Detective: Night Country, CBC’s Trickster and Amazon Prime Video’s Three Pines. On top of starring in North of North, Anna will soon co-star alongside Brad Pitt in Paramount Pictures’ action-adventure movie The Heart of the Beast and being part of the ensemble cast of The Social Reckoning, the high-profile sequel to The Social Network directed by Aaron Sorkin.

Here’s a snippet of the in-depth profile article below:

Anna Lambe came to work. In the pistachio-coloured library at the University Club of Toronto just before Christmas, the Iqaluit-born actor gave off a quiet intensity that focused the room – intent when taking direction, self-possessed with an audience of editors, stylists and makeup artists watching her, keen to get the shot. In between setups, back in her jeans, T-shirt and slippers, she spoke about her love of buttered toast (she could – and often does – eat it every day) and travels in Northern Ireland with her partner and True Detective co-star, actor Finn Bennett.

The 25-year-old plays the lead character in North of North, the CBC, Netflix and APTN series that follows a young Inuk woman, Siaja, who feels trapped by marriage and motherhood and decides to blow up her life. In mid-January, shortly after this shoot, Lambe began production on the show’s second season in Toronto before heading back to Nunavut, where the cast will continue filming into April.

The first season of the show – Netflix’s first original Canadian series – was produced on-location in Iqaluit in what can only be described as a Herculean feat of filmmaking and collective will. With essentially no existing film infrastructure, shooting in the north is a “logistical nightmare,” Lambe says.

The sets for the fictional town of Ice Cove were built in Toronto, then disassembled and flown to Nunavut, where they were reconstructed inside the local curling club. The production’s unprecedented scale caused the power to blow multiple times; the days were long and the temperatures hit minus-20. Lambe lived at her childhood home during the epic four-month shoot.

“We just had to give everyone and each other so much grace,” she says. “This is the first time a show of this size has been shot entirely in the north, so we’re all figuring it out for the first time.”

A striking aspect of the series, created by Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, is the degree to which it centres Inuit language and culture. Elder characters speak primarily in Inuktitut, and cultural references (bum hopping, walrus dick baseball, seal hunts) are dropped in without over-explaining for non-Indigenous audiences.

Growing up, Lambe did not harbour big-screen dreams. She describes her upbringing as working class, with the world of film and television “so far away.” She was an apprehensive, reserved kid (she is still, by her own admission, incredibly anxious and shy), and in high school enrolled in a drama class only because she needed the credit. When she was 15, casting directors for The Grizzlies came to Iqaluit looking for Inuit teens to audition for the film, based on the real-life youth suicide crisis in Kugluktuk, Nunavut. At the urging of her drama teacher, Lambe auditioned, almost backing out at the last minute due to intense nerves, and was cast as one of the leads, Spring.

Despite a positive experience with the successful film – critics penned favourable reviews, and Lambe was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 2019 Canadian Screen Awards – she never considered that she would have a future in acting. “It was more so a feeling of, ‘well, that was interesting,’” she says.

After graduating from high school, Lambe enrolled at the University of Ottawa to study international development and globalization, with the goal of returning to Nunavut to address the increasingly urgent housing crisis.

“That’s something that I’ve always been really passionate about,” she says. “I think that’s at the core of so many issues within our communities, and if we can’t solve the housing crisis, we’re not going to be able to deal with the trauma that people are facing.”

Then, in 2018, barely into her first semester, The Grizzlies premiered at TIFF and Lambe was thrust into promoting a film that was opening up real conversations about issues facing Indigenous communities. It was then that she realized advocacy and acting could go hand in hand, and that a role could even amplify her activism work.

“Press is an opportunity to say something important, and that’s how I’ve always approached it,” Lambe says. “Even the most simple questions can be turned into something meaningful.”