Latest news with #NorthofNorth
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'True Detective,' 'North of North' Inuk star Anna Lambe on taking risks and telling Indigenous stories with humour
In recent years, Anna Lambe's acting career has skyrocketed. The Inuk actor from Iqaluit got her start at 15 years old on the film The Grizzlies, then went on to star alongside Alfred Molina in the Prime Video series Three Pines, and worked with Jodie Foster in True Detective: Night Country. Most recently, Lambe starred as Siaja in the APTN, CBC and Netflix series North of North, which first released to rave reviews. Next up for Lambe? She will star alongside Brad Pitt in David Ayer's movie Heart of the Beast. "It's pretty surreal. It's really, really cool," Lambe told Yahoo Canada about being cast in Heart of the Beast. "Every new project just feels so exciting. But I mean, the caliber and the size of Heart of the Beast is just, I feel very honoured to have the trust of the team to hop in and do my thing."Lambe's acting career started at her Nunavut high school, where there were posters put up to attract students to join a workshop for The Grizzlies, and Lambe's drama teacher recommended that she participate. In an interesting turn of events, Lambe almost backed out of participating, feeling too shy and anxious, but her dad was already on his way to pick her up, so she went. And the rest is history. "Every time I get a new job, it's something that my dad always makes sure to remind me of is, 'Can you imagine if you never went and did that audition?'" Lambe said. "It's really humbling and it just makes me think about it in the big picture." "I am grateful that I just took the chance. I mean, it was a low risk chance, but it has led to so many bigger things. I've had to take risks over and over again along the way, that's just how this industry rolls. And everything's a bit of a roll of the dice, but I've embraced that a little bit more, and I'm really curious to see what comes next." Lambe would go on to work with the team behind The Grizzlies again on North of North. "They took a chance on me when I was 15 and then they took a chance on me again when I was 23, and I am so grateful for the way that they always lead with the community at the forefront of their minds," Lambe said. "And that it's always about how they can give back and how they can tell stories with nuance and complexity, and appropriately and authentically." The Grizzlies is a film about a group of teens in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, the town with the highest suicide rate in all of North America, who connect by playing lacrosse. Lambe plays the only female player on the team, Spring, and was tasked with taking on particularly difficult topics, like domestic violence. "In playing Spring and taking up space, she really goes through this arc where she finds her strength after such significant loss and trauma, and how she, as a young woman, was like, 'I'm not going to be scared out of things that I want to do,'" Lambe said. "We're so often encouraged to make ourselves smaller for other people, and recognizing that your story and your strength and your resilience is valid, and is important, and is, I think, something that we all deserve to hear, to see." When Lambe was filming The Grizzlies, she didn't fully grasp what being in a movie meant. She was just excited to make friends and tell an important story, and that desire to have fun and attraction to storytelling is still what drives her. "I just get to move through this industry with a smile on my face, because I'm just having the time of my life," Lambe said. Once Lambe got to Three Pines, the story of the show was particularly emotional, and difficult for the actor to both work on and watch. Adapted from Louise Penny's best-selling book, the show is centred around investigations into murders in a Quebec town, including the disappearance of an Indigenous girl, Blue Two-Rivers, played by Lambe. While Blue's family is adamant she wouldn't mysteriously leave, and certainly wouldn't leave her daughter behind, the Quebec police are quick to dismiss her case. "Three Pines was a heavy project and I think there was a lot happening at the time that made it that much harder. And it's a deeply personal thing to me, and something that I was struggling with at the time and trying to kind of deal with all of these different feelings that I was having," Lambe said. "But the very real issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is something that, I think, we can never stop talking about, and something that I think deserves that space and that platform." "It was very much a difficult one, and one that I really also struggled to watch. Violence against Indigenous women is a very real threat and also something that many of us have experienced, or have loved ones who have experienced. Three Pines was so different from anything else that I had done up until that point, and continues to be different from anything else I've done since. ... Because of how difficult it was for me, I don't know if I would choose to do that kind of thing again. But those kinds of stories are so important in continuing to highlight that crisis that very much is still happening within our communities." While Lambe shared the screen with great talents like Alfred Molina, Rossif Sutherland, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Tantoo Cardinal in Three Pines, the celebrity of her collaborators certainly grew in True Detective: Night Country. "Stepping into True Detective was such a dream," Lambe said. "The cast on that show was so incredible. I mean Jodie Foster, of course, but Kali Reis, Finn Bennett, John Hawkes, Chris Eccleston, Isabella LaBlanc, what an incredible cast and lovely people. Really such a great group of people to work with." "[Showrunner] Issa López, I adore her with my whole heart. And she put so much attention to detail into everything that she did, everything she wrote, everything she directed. She was such a powerhouse. And I admire her work so dearly. And as well as the Alaskan producers, Cathy Tagnak Rexford and Princess Johnson." In True Detective: Night Country, set in Alaska, Lambe plays Kayla Prior, whose husband Peter (Finn Bennett) is a rookie detective working under Foster's character Liz Danvers. Lambe has said the relationship reminded her of her own parents. "[True Detective: Night Country] gave me a taste of what could be and something to chase for the rest of my career," Lambe said. "It allowed me the time and the space, with the acting coaches and the dialect coaches and everything, to try and do my best, to level myself up." "That shoot was just such a privilege and getting to meet everyone on it was such a privilege. And the story that we told was one that was deeply important, again about missing and murdered Indigenous women, but also about empowerment and reclamation, and taking back and justice, whatever that may look like, or whatever that might mean. And whether you agree with that or not is always something that can be debated. It was just really exciting and empowering, and it's a point of my career that I often look on and I'm like, 'I can't believe that happened. That's so cool.'" Lambe moved into comedy in a big way for North of North, a show that's outrageously funny and balances its emotional moments with perfection. Lambe plays Siaja, a young Inuk woman who goes through a very public separation from her husband in their Nunavut town, having to reevaluate her life under the close eye of her community, while also providing for her daughter. "The amount of people that have loved it has been just really humbling, overwhelming, heartwarming," Lambe said. "I'm so grateful that so many people have been open and receptive to seeing the story in a place they might not have seen before, and allowed themselves to kind of fall in love with these characters and the show that we created." But it was the light-hearted nature of the story that really appealed to Lambe, versus having to work through a lot of trauma-based storylines in her previous work. "It was going to be hard and it was going to be really long days, and we were going to be battling the cold, and that definitely posed challenges throughout filming, but in terms of content it was like, this is going to be fun," Lambe said. "And there were so many times where, in approaching episodes and scenes that we were filming, amongst the cast and amongst the crew, we'd be chatting with each other like, 'I can't wait to do this part. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to do Inuk Bridgerton. That's going to be so beautiful. I can't wait to do the underwater sequences. That's going to be really cool.' So just getting to kind of exist and play in so many different forms and moods and tempos was really nice. Because we can go from really high comedy, clown-esque comedy, and we kind of break your heart a little bit. ... I think to have that full swing is really fun and a huge privilege as an actor." Another highlight from North of North is how the show really uses costumes as a tool to tell this story, particularly if you look at how Siaja dresses, versus her mother Neevee (Maika Harper), and Siaja's daughter Bun (Keira Cooper). "The costumes played such a huge part into how I understood Siaja. Her love of colour and fun cuts and fun patterns, and fun prints," Lambe said. "And even more so, I think what I loved was how Bun was dressed. She had such bold parkas, and she wore whatever she wanted, and these kind of cool, little funky outfits. I think there was something really interesting about going from Neevee's colour palette to Siaja to Bun's, because there is a kind of gradual shift into bright and bold colours and expression, and fun. And that, to me, really exemplified the intergenerational healing that happened amongst those three generations, and that with each generation people get to express themselves a little bit more. That we create safer spaces for our children to grow and be who they are. And I think the costume department did such an incredible job of representing that." But when the show does have to lean into its more emotional moments, including a scene where Neevee tells Siaja that before she was born, she had another daughter who was taken by her white father, it's handled with so much care and adds such a richness of the storytelling in North of North. "I think at the core of the show, what was most important for us was the authenticity of it, and the experience of living in the North, and the complexities of our communities and our family dynamics," Lambe said. "And something that's very real is how our community really struggles with the trauma from colonialism and how we navigate that." "But for the most part, we do it through humour. ... From really dry humour to really silly like fart joke humour, the coping exists within all of that. And those moments where you do just break open, those are real too. And I think defining the show as one thing or the other, as just a comedy or just a drama, doesn't do it the service of, it's just a human experience, and just a human story. So it was nice to feel like we weren't needing to exist in one or the other, and that we can have both at different moments, and they both serve the story equally importantly."
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'True Detective,' 'North of North' Inuk star Anna Lambe on taking risks and telling Indigenous stories with humour
In recent years, Anna Lambe's acting career has skyrocketed. The Inuk actor from Iqaluit got her start at 15 years old on the film The Grizzlies, then went on to star alongside Alfred Molina in the Prime Video series Three Pines, and worked with Jodie Foster in True Detective: Night Country. Most recently, Lambe starred as Siaja in the CBC and Netflix series North of North, with the first released to rave reviews. Next up for Lambe? She will star alongside Brad Pitt in David Ayer's movie Heart of the Beast. "It's pretty surreal. It's really, really cool," Lambe told Yahoo Canada about being cast in Heart of the Beast. "Every new project just feels so exciting. But I mean, the caliber and the size of Heart of the Beast is just, I feel very honoured to have the trust of the team to hop in and do my thing." Lambe's acting career started at her Nunavut high school, where there were posters put up to attract students to join a workshop for The Grizzlies, and Lambe's drama teacher recommended that she participate. In an interesting turn of events, Lambe almost "backed out" of the workshop, feeling too shy and anxious to participate, but her dad was already on his way to pick her up, so she went. And the rest is history. "Every time I get a new job, it's something that my dad always makes sure to remind me of is, 'Can you imagine if you never went and did that audition?'" Lambe said. "It's really humbling and it just makes me think about it in the big picture." "I am grateful that I just took the chance. I mean, it was a low risk chance, but it has kind of led to so many bigger things. I've had to take risks over and over again along the way, that's just how this industry rolls. And everything's a bit of a roll of the dice, but I've embraced that a little bit more, and I'm really curious to see what what comes next." Lambe would go on to work with the team behind The Grizzlies again on North of North. "They took a chance on me when I was 15 and then they took a chance on me again when I was 23, and I am so grateful for the way that they always lead with the community at the forefront of their minds," Lambe said. "And that it's always about how they can give back and how they can tell stories with nuance and complexity, and appropriately and authentically." The Grizzlies is a film about a group of teens in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, the town with the highest suicide rate in all of North America, who connect by playing lacrosse. Lambe plays the only female player on the team, Spring, and was tasked with taking on particularly difficult topics, like domestic violence. "In playing Spring and taking up space, she really goes through this arc where she finds her strength after such significant loss and trauma, and how she, as a young woman, was like, 'I'm not going to be scared out of things that I want to do,'" Lambe said. "We're so often encouraged to make ourselves smaller for other people, and recognizing that your story and your strength and your resilience is valid, and is important, and is, I think, something that we all deserve to hear, to see." When Lambe was filming The Grizzlies, she didn't fully grasp what being in a movie meant. She was just excited to make friends and tell an important story, and that desire to have fun and attraction to storytelling is still what drives her. "I just get to move through this industry with a smile on my face, because I'm just having the time of my life," Lambe said. Once Lambe got to Three Pines, the story of the show was particularly emotional, and difficult for the actor to both work on and watch. Adapted from Louise Penny's best-selling book, the show is centred around investigations into murders in a Quebec town, including the disappearance of an Indigenous girl, Blue Two-Rivers, played by Lambe. While Blue's family is adamant she wouldn't mysteriously leave, and certainly wouldn't leave her daughter behind, the Quebec police are quick to dismiss her case. "Three Pines was a heavy project and I think there was a lot happening at the time that made it that much harder. And it's a deeply personal thing to me, and something that I was struggling with at the time and trying to kind of deal with all of these different feelings that I was having," Lambe said. "But the very real issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is something that, I think, we can never stop talking about, and something that I think deserves that space and that platform." "It was very much a difficult one, and one that I really also struggled to watch. Violence against Indigenous women is a very real threat and also something that many of us have experienced, or have loved ones who have experienced. Three Pines was so different from anything else that I had done up until that point, and continues to be different from anything else I've done since. ... Because of how difficult it was for me, I don't know if I would choose to do that kind of thing again. But those kinds of stories are so important in continuing to highlight that crisis that very much is still happening within our communities." While Lambe shared the screen with great talents like Alfred Molina, Rossif Sutherland, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Tantoo Cardinal in Three Pines, the celebrity of her collaborators certainly grew in True Detective: Night Country. "Stepping into True Detective was such a dream," Lambe said. "The cast on that show was so incredible. I mean Jodie Foster, of course, but Kali Reis, Finn Bennett, John Hawkes, Chris Eccleston, Isabella LaBlanc, what an incredible cast and lovely people. Really such a great group of people to work with." "[Showrunner] Issa López, I adore her with my whole heart. And she put so much attention to detail into everything that she did, everything she wrote, everything she directed. She was such a powerhouse. And I admire her work so dearly. And as well as the Alaskan producers, Cathy Tagnak Rexford and Princess Johnson." In True Detective: Night Country, set in Alaska, Lambe plays Kayla Prior, whose husband Peter (Finn Bennett) is a rookie detective working under Foster's character Liz Danvers. Lambe has said the relationship reminded her of her own parents. "[True Detective: Night Country] gave me a taste of what could be and something to chase for the rest of my career," Lambe said. "It allowed me the time and the space, with the acting coaches and the dialect coaches and everything, to try and do my best, to level myself up." "That shoot was just such a privilege and getting to meet everyone on it was such a privilege. And the story that we told was one that was deeply important, again about missing and murdered Indigenous women, but also about empowerment and reclamation, and taking back and justice, whatever that may look like, or whatever that might mean. And whether you agree with that or not is always something that can be debated. It was just really exciting and empowering, and it's a point of my career that I often look on and I'm like, 'I can't believe that happened. That's so cool.'" Lambe moved into comedy in a big way for North of North, a show that's outrageously funny and balances its emotional moments with perfection. Lambe plays Siaja, a young Inuk woman who goes through a very public separation from her husband in their small town, having to reevaluate her life under the close eye of her community, while also providing for her daughter. "The amount of people that have loved it has been just really humbling, overwhelming, heartwarming," Lambe said. "I'm so grateful that so many people have been open and receptive to seeing the story in a place they might not have seen before, and allowed themselves to kind of fall in love with these characters and the show that we created." But it was the light-hearted nature of the story that really appealed to Lambe, versus having to work through a lot of trauma-based storyline in her previous work. "It was going to be hard and it was going to be really long days, and we were going to be battling the cold, and that definitely posed challenges throughout filming, but in terms of content it was like, this is going to be fun," Lambe said. "And there were so many times where, in approaching episodes and scenes that we were filming, amongst the cast and amongst the crew, we'd be chatting with each other like, 'I can't wait to do this part. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to do Inuk Bridgerton. That's going to be so beautiful. I can't wait to do the underwater sequences. That's going to be really cool.' So just getting to kind of exist and play in so many different forms and moods and and tempos was really nice. Because we can go from like really high comedy, clown-esque comedy, and we kind of break your heart a little bit. ... I think to have that full swing is really fun and a huge privilege as an actor." Another highlight from North of North is how the show really uses costumes as a tool to tell this story, particularly if you look at how Siaja dresses, versus her mother Neevee (Maika Harper), and Siaja's daughter Bun (Keira Cooper). "The costumes played such a huge part into how I understood Siaja. Her love of colour and fun cuts and fun patterns, and fun prints," Lambe said. "And even more so, I think what I loved was how Bun was dressed. She had such bold parkas, and she wore whatever she wanted, and these kind of cool, little funky outfits. I think there was something really interesting about going from Neevee's colour palette to Siaja to Bun's, because there is a kind of gradual shift into into bright and bold colours and expression, and fun. And that, to me, really exemplified the intergenerational healing that happened amongst those those three generations, and that with each generation people get to express themselves a little bit more. That we create safer spaces for our children to grow and be who they are. And I think the costume department did such an incredible job of representing that." But when the show does have to lean into its more emotional moments, including a scene where Neevee tells Siaja that before she was born, she had another child who was taken by her white father, it's handled with so much care and adds such a richness of the storytelling in North of North. "I think at the core of the show, what was most important for us was the authenticity of it, and the experience of living in the North, and the complexities of our communities and our family dynamics," Lambe said. "And something that's very real is how our community really struggles with the trauma from colonialism and how we navigate that." "But for the most part, we do it through humour. ... From really dry humour to really silly like fart joke humour, the coping exists within all of that. And those moments where you do just break open, those are real too. And I think defining the show as one thing or the other, as just a comedy or just a drama, doesn't do it the service of, it's just a human experience, and just a human story. So it was nice to feel like we weren't needing to exist in one or the other, and that we can have both at different moments, and they both serve the story equally importantly."
USA Today
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
These are the 10 best shows of 2025 so far. Did your favorite make our list?
These are the 10 best shows of 2025 so far. Did your favorite make our list? Show Caption Hide Caption Watch Noah Wyle in 'The Pitt': Doctor gives advice for dying patient In new TV series "The Pitt," Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) counsels the dying using words from a mentor. So far, 2025 has been one heck of a year, in real life and on TV. Current events are churning out endless eye-popping headlines, and networks and streaming services are going from Thailand to the Arctic to a galaxy far, far away to try to capture your attention and time with new and returning TV series. Already this year we've seen long-running series like "The Handmaid's Tale" come to an end, HBO devastate Pedro Pascal fans for a second time and Parker Posey's fake Southern accent take over TikTok. Plus there were some really good shows that we all watched, or maybe you missed. From ratings juggernauts like HBO's "The White Lotus" to tiny comedies like Netflix's "North of North" to a CBS procedural ("Matlock") with way more bite than you'd expect, these are the 10 best shows of 2025 so far. You've got the rest of the year to catch up on them. 10. 'The White Lotus' (HBO) Though not quite as transcendent as its first and second seasons, HBO's anthology wealth satire, set at a different luxury resort each year, remains one of the best shows on television, even when it isn't perfect. This year's trip to Thailand was an exercise in incivility and taboo-breaking, a cacophonous symphony of troubled souls colliding amid Mai Tais and monkeys. With a cast of great actors including Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Posey and bright new stars like Patrick Schwarzenegger (yes, the son of Arnold), writer Mike White kept "Lotus" on the edge of mayhem with every tense, stressful episode. If some fans were disappointed by its Shakespearean ending, we need only wait for the show to check into a new Lotus resort in Season 4 to get a new taste of White's pleasurably agonizing storytelling style. 9. 'Severance' (Apple TV+) The long-awaited second season of Apple's mind-boggling workplace drama brought just as much mystic strangeness and corporate jargon as fans were expecting. If frustratingly convoluted and esoteric in its science fiction plotting, "Severance" always gets its emotions right, in no small part thanks to its talented cast, including Adam Scott, Britt Lower and the magnetic and magnificent Tramell Tillman. Stunning to watch and dizzying to think about, "Severance" Season 2 got it right in all the moments that mattered. Now once more, we wait to see what Lumon Industries will offer us next. 8. 'North of North' (Netflix) This coming-of-age comedy set in a tiny Arctic village that's, well, north of what you think of as North probably flew below your radar this spring. But gleeful and bubbling with energy, "North" is well worth a watch. It stars the instantly magnetic Anna Lambe as Siaja, a young woman living a seemingly perfect life as a wife and mother, married her remote village's favorite son. But Siaja walked down the aisle and had a child when she was so young that she never had time to find her own identity and goals. In the opening episode of the comedy she finally takes control of her destiny, in the most awkward and humorous way possible. Full of cutesy (but not in a bad way) sitcom high jinks and set in a deeply unique but strangely familiar locale, "North" will charm its way into your heart, no matter how cold. 7. 'Apple Cider Vinegar' (Netflix) Kaitlyn Dever won more attention for her role as a violent killer Abby in HBO's "The Last of Us," but the actress showed off considerable skill as an equally unlikable character in this ripped-from-the-headlines scammer story. As Australian "wellness" influencer Belle Gibson, who faked cancer so she could claim she cured it with the special recipes she was hawking, Dever excelled at being odious and hateful while looking pretty and perfect. The series captures the lure of "alternative medicine" for young women and the sexism in health care that often drives them to look for fantastical (and completely unproven) miracle cures. 6. 'Overcompensating' (Amazon Prime) Underpinning every thigh-slapping comedy bit in Amazon's raucous and irreverent college comedy "Overcompensating" is a deeply real understanding of the messy and imperfect way that human beings transition from flailing young teens into flailing young adults. Set in our TikTok times, "Overcompensating" could represent anyone's college experience, even if they're not as a timid gay jock trapped in the closet like protagonist Benny (Benito Skinner, also the series' creator). Benny and pal Carmen's (Wally Baram) hilarious and relatable journey through their freshman year is a cringeworthy pleasure, funny and feeling and backed by great beats from Charli XCX (also a producer and guest star). Just look away during all the vomit and defecation gags. 5. 'Matlock' (CBS) Who knew that what seemed like a generic broadcast reboot (of the 1980s Andy Griffith legal drama) could be so darn inventive and creatively ambitious? Led by "Jane the Virgin" creator Jennie Snyder Urman, the new "Matlock" is everything you hope for from a CBS procedural, and so much more: Surprising, heartfelt, witty, thrilling and deeply thoughtful. Its compelling case-of-the-week legal stories and adorable cast of characters would be enough to make it good, but it's the chemistry between leads Kathy Bates (a shoo-in for an Emmy nomination) and Skye P. Marshall that makes the series soar. In the second half of the first season, "Matlock" only became smarter, more self-assured and more driven in its storytelling as Matty's (Bates) personal investigation collided with her new professional life and family. 4. 'Sirens' (Netflix) Netflix's limited series from "Maid" creator Molly Smith Metzler, based on her 2011 play "Elemeno Pea," is a delight for the senses, a chewy melodrama about the haves and the have-nots unwillingly clumped together. Featuring stunning performances from Meghann Fahy ("The White Lotus"), Milly Alcock ("House of the Dragon") and Julianne Moore, "Sirens" is deliciously campy with a bright beautiful setting and bold costume design that is worth a thousand words. The story and symbolism might occasionally get hazy, but the series has a song that will grab you instantly and keep you until its bitter end. 3. 'Adolescence' (Netflix) A quiet British crime drama about the dangers of online male toxicity to young boys ballooned through the sheer power of its storytelling to become Netflix's second-most-watched English language series of all time, outperforming "Stranger Things" and "Bridgerton." The moment you set your eyes on the four-part limited series (each episode is filmed in one tantalizingly long single shot), you can't look away from the everyday horror of the story of middle schooler Jamie Miller's (Owen Cooper) brutal murder of a female classmate. In addition to setting viewership records, the series sparked deep conversations about the online "manosphere" and the dangers of social media on kids' malleable young minds. 2. 'Andor' (Disney)+ As impeccable and devastating as its sublime first installment in 2022, Disney+'s mature 'Star Wars' series is the best thing the franchise has turned out since the original trilogy, and the heart-rending second and final season only affirms that. The first season of the "Rogue One" prequel dealt with how Diego Luna's Cassian Andor was used and abused by the evil Empire and radicalized to join the Rebel Alliance that will one day name Luke Skywalker and Han Solo among its members. Season 2 asks a bigger, thornier question than just "Will you take a stand against tyranny": How will you do it? And what is worth giving up for it? Luna's haunting performance as the title character grounds the grim series, and "Andor" becomes a sadly relevant, morally gray and deeply compelling portrait of resistance amid love, friendship, trauma and everything between. 1. 'The Pitt' (Max) In this tumultuous and uncertain year, no series has captured our national mood better than Max's 'The Pitt,' a medical drama built for the interesting times in which we live. The chaos of our real world is mirrored in the overcrowded mess of a Pittsburgh emergency room manned by exhausted health care workers who get punched in the face for all their heroic efforts. Producer John Wells and star Noah Wyle did not simply recreate their 1990s broadcast megahit 'ER'(no matter what a lawsuit by 'ER' creator Michael Crichton's estate claims). What they did was reinvent the medical drama for 2025 so that it feels both familiar and completely new. The 'real-time' structure, in which each of the 15 episodes represents one hour in a seemingly never-ending shift, adds a maximally frenetic pace to a series that's already in a genre that moves faster than the rest. And beyond the comfort of seeing Wyle back in scrubs, "The Pitt" actors are impeccably cast and infinitely likable, the makings of an ensemble that can charm an audience for years. Season 2 needs to premiere, stat.
The Spinoff
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
‘This never happens': Bailey Poching on getting cast in Netflix's North of North
The comedian and actor takes us through his life in television. It was on a Monday morning that actor and comedian Bailey Poching recorded his audition for Netflix's North of North, describing himself as being 'a hair's breadth' from throwing in the towel and heading back into hospitality. He sent his tape in, and got a reply that afternoon asking if he could audition in his own accent. By Tuesday, he had a Zoom meeting with Netflix and the showrunners. By Wednesday, he had got the job. Less than a week later, he was shooting his first scene in the Arctic Canadian territory of Nunavut in -40 degree conditions. 'I think I'll be telling that story for the rest of my life,' Poching laughs. 'It was like trying to appreciate the feeling of winning the lottery in real time. We romanticise this happening, but this never happens for actors.' For the next three months, Poching played Colin, a radio DJ looking to find love in the arctic circle in Netflix's first Canadian production – and the first show of its kind to be centered around the indigenous Inuk community. 'It felt like capturing something really special, and it was really cool to be even peripheral to that,' he says. Poching, who is Māori and Samoan, says he learned a lot about story sovereignty from being a part of the groundbreaking series. 'I remember asking the showrunners for advice on making indigenous TV shows and they were like 'you will have an easier time, because at least there's a precedent for indigenous film and TV in New Zealand',' he says. 'There was a sense of reckoning with the fact that, in our position as Pacific and Māori storytellers, we do have more opportunities than some of our indigenous whānau around the world to make television – even if there's still not heaps.' Closer to home, Poching is a part of another important onscreen kōrero in Don't, TVNZ's new big issue comedy series. In it, comedian Bubbah is joined by a host of funny friends to interrogate the big issues facing rangatahi today. Poching's episode is all about marriage, including interviewing university students and rest home residents alike about their attitudes towards it. 'The title is quite provocative, but Don't really holds space for so many different cultural and social perspectives on what marriage represents, the origins of it and how we feel about it now,' he says. 'There's no sense of judgment in it at all.' A lot of that, he says, comes down to host Bubbah's own curiosity about the world. 'She has such an interesting lens and so much to say, but she's also an incredible listener.' Taking a leaf out of the beloved comedian's book, we carefully listened to Poching's eclectic life in television, including Scottish Wipe Out for kids and how Coca-Cola made him famous in Australia. My earliest TV memory is… I spent the first 19 years of my life in the UK, and so my TV memories are of CBBC, the children's BBC channel, and a show called Balamory. The jingle really sticks in my head – ' what's the story in Balamory, wouldn't you like to know?' It's one of those things that I'll say to myself, but then people here don't really know what I'm talking about. We also had lots of VHS tapes of The Wiggles, and they did a crossover episode with the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin. It was like Avengers: Endgame. The show I would rush home from school to watch was… I watched so much TV as a kid. Superhero cartoons were huge for me – X Men, Spider Man, Fantastic Four. There was a game show called Raven that was like Wipe Out, but fantasy themed and for kids. The host was called Raven and he wore a feathered cloak and had a big staff. If a kid failed a challenge, he would like place his staff on the kid's shoulder, and then they disappeared. It was the most terrifying thing – that kid just applied to be on a TV show, now he's vanished. My first time on television was… A Coca-Cola commercial, just before Covid. I was playing an Uber Eats driver and I appear for two seconds at the end. Honestly, because of the way TV commercials work, that really helped me out through Covid. I didn't realise it played in Australia as well, so I had family sending me photos and it was a huge moment of pride. Now, I don't know how I would feel about doing a Coca-Cola commercial, but I needed that at the time. My favourite NZ TV ad is… This was such a phenomenon for me moving here, when I realised that a lot of these local ads have vice-like grip on people of a certain generation. I remember Ghost Chips was huge on YouTube. The 'do it yourself' kid tradies were also pretty big in my house because I have a dad who grew up in New Zealand and a mum who grew up in Australia. Any kind of recognition of those two countries was always nice. My TV guilty pleasure is… Any YouTube show where celebrities eat food, so things like Hot Ones and the Angela Hartnett and Nick Grimshaw podcast Dish. I'll line up a bunch of those while I'm making food or cleaning up and just watch celebrities eating food. I love food, and I'm interested in celebrities as well. They are kind of like the modern talk show. A TV moment that haunts me is… Anything from the David Tennant Doctor Who era, which had a lot of really scary stuff in it. I remember there were these monsters that had pig faces and human bodies, or one big brain with a single eye and all these tentacles. It traumatised me – I asked my brother to wait outside the bathroom while I was showering, because I was so scared. My favourite TV character is… Mark Corrigan from Peep Show. Word for word, some of the funniest dialogue maybe ever put on television. I have a deep affection and appreciation for cringe humour and he's a character whose whole purpose is putting his foot in his mouth while also having that common trope of unearned confidence and being so certain of himself. He's so smart, he's done everything he was told to do growing up, and he's still a failure. It's so poetically funny. My favourite TV project I've ever been involved in is… North of North is a very special one because of the indigenous kaupapa. It feels like such a triumph to have that story on TV, and to be even peripheral to it was such an honour. But I have to make a special mention to Kid Sister, because Simone Nathan was kind enough to give me that opportunity and I had a blast. A TV project I wish I could be involved in is… I always romanticise the lifestyle of an SNL writer, where you pitch on Monday, and then you're up all Tuesday night writing the silliest stuff. And I feel like I've seen a picture of Bobby Moynihan smoking a cigarette out a window and they're all there with Bill Hader and Seth Meyers. This idea of working with your closest, funniest friends would be my dream. That, or doing a voice on a superhero cartoon. My controversial TV opinion is… We should be making weirder television and taking more creative risks. I think there's so much space for us to explore the weirder stories of New Zealand, rather than packaging up something neat for a global audience. There's a lot of idiosyncrasies and dark little stories for us to tell, and not just in the grim murder mystery way. I think there's so much to explore still in our underrepresented communities, and I dream of seeing abstract, surreal, artistic television made here. A TV show I will never watch, no matter how many people tell me I should is… The White Lotus is becoming that for me. I remember, with season one, seeing that it was a show about privilege, set in Hawaii, and that was the cast? I think this trend of shows about people with too much privilege is hopefully curving downward, because the more seasons it gets, the more it's too much homework now to catch up on. I'm sure it's actually incredible, but something about that initial idea turned me away from it. The last thing I watched on television was… The first season of Severance, which was really good. I got told to catch up before season two started, so I watched the whole of season one on a plane and it was gripping – I was totally locked in. Interesting craft, interesting filmmaking decisions, interesting writing decisions, and all just carried by great performance and production design. Well-crafted TV.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ontario Science Centre Kicks Off Annual 3 Communities, 3 Events Series with Free Indigenous Celebration at Harbourfront Centre on June 7
Presented by TELUS, the annual series showcases three vibrant communities with free events including Indigenous Celebration 2025, featuring live performances, hands-on activities and interactive storytelling and book signing with author and North of North TV star Maika Harper TORONTO, June 2, 2025 /CNW/ - The Ontario Science Centre, in collaboration with Indigenous partners, is proud to host a free, family-friendly event Indigenous Celebration 2025 on Saturday, June 7, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Harbourfront Centre. Presented by TELUS, this special event features interactive workshops, live performances, storytelling and fun hands-on crafts and activities that highlight Indigenous ways of knowing and foster connection with Indigenous community members. Indigenous Celebration 2025 is part of the annual 3 Communities, 3 Events series, showcasing the richness of diverse communities with free events throughout the year. Indigenous Celebration 2025 features a variety of interactive, hands-on learning experiences including vibrant performances by the Spring Creek dancers, engaging storytelling and book signing with author Maika Harper (star of CBC/Netflix series North of North), energetic Métis jigging, fiddling lessons, an animal pelt table, and much more. The 3 Communities, 3 Events series continues this year with two upcoming free, family-friendly celebrations. Celebrate Black Excellence takes place on Saturday, September 20, 2025, at Scarborough Town Centre, followed by Pride in STEM on Saturday, November 15, 2025, at Harbourfront Centre. With the generous support of TELUS, these events celebrate diverse communities through interactive activities, engaging performances and more. Stay tuned for details and sign up for eNews to learn more. QUOTES "June is National Indigenous History Month—a time to honour and celebrate the cultures, traditions and contributions of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples," said Paul Kortenaar, CEO, Ontario Science Centre. "Through community events like Indigenous Celebration, we have a meaningful opportunity to learn from Indigenous voices and experiences, and we're grateful to our Indigenous partners and the generous support of TELUS for making our 3 Communities 3 Events series possible." "At TELUS, we recognize the transformative power of connecting communities and honouring the profound cultural heritage of Indigenous Peoples," said Patrick Barron, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability, TELUS. "As a long-standing partner of the Ontario Science Centre, we are proud to support the 3 Communities, 3 Events series, creating authentic opportunities for families to engage with Indigenous knowledge, traditions, and ways of understanding." For more details about our programming, upcoming pop-ups and events, and to book your visit to our Ontario Science Centre Experiences at KidSpark at Harbourfront Centre and CF Sherway Gardens, please visit About the Ontario Science CentreSpark your curiosity with Ontario Science Centre Experiences! For over 55 years, the Ontario Science Centre has inspired a passion for the human adventure of discovery through fun experiences that educate and entertain kids and adults alike. In addition to pop-ups at festivals and student-focused events, enjoy Ontario Science Centre Experiences at two satellite locations. Visit for more information and sign up for eNews to find out where we'll be next. SOURCE Ontario Science Centre View original content to download multimedia: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
