North of North: The moment Siaja knows her marriage is over
Siaja wants something more in her life, starting with a job. But she knows her husband, Ting — her high school sweetheart and town golden boy — has other ideas.
"It's this moment where she's finally facing her husband and saying, I'm doing it, and I'm going to do something for me," says actor Anna Lambe, who plays lead character Siaja in the new CBC comedy series, North of North.
The series, which features a talented cast of Indigenous actors and offers a realistic but hilarious look at life in a remote northern community is set in the fictional Arctic town, Ice Cove.
In this scene from the first episode (watch at the top of this story), the couple are alone on a boat, participating in a seal hunt for the town's spring festival. Siaja tries to talk to Ting about her plans for the future, but it's clear that Ting is not having it.
"What kind of Inuk woman are you?" he counters.
At that moment, Siaja spots a seal. Ting takes aim and fires while she hustles to the back of the boat to get his niksik (fishing hook). As Ting accelerates the boat in pursuit, Siaja tumbles off the back, into the water. "He just doesn't even notice… he's got the biggest smile on his face, which always kills me," says Lambe.
While the series was almost entirely filmed in Iqaluit, which stars as the fictional Ice Cove, production had to make an exception for this scene. Filming on open water would have required travelling miles from shore up north off Frobisher Bay, something the team's insurance would not have covered. So this scene was shot in June on Lake Ontario.
Unfortunately, southern Ontario was experiencing a heat wave, which led to some hilarious moments for the crew as the actors wore shorts and bathing suits and held cooling packs under their parkas.
"It was hot!" says Lambe, laughing at the extreme contrast between -30 in the North and +30 in this scene.
When Siaja falls into the water, she encounters Inuit sea deity Nuliajuk, played by actor and singer Tanya Tagaq.
"We always envisioned Tanya right from the moment we conceived it," says series co-creator Stacey Aglok MacDonald.
"We basically got down on our knees and proposed, we were like, 'Will you be our Nuliajuk?' And, thankfully she was so in for it."
"She is such a fun energy to be around," says Lambe, who describes her days shooting with Tagaq as "a breath of fresh air."
Watch North of North, now streaming free on CBC Gem.
