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Starring Cale Ambrozic as Brayden Elliot and Madelyn Keys as Adriana Russo, the eight-part series is adapted from Jennifer Iacopelli’s novel of the same name and inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion.Netflix
It’s no secret that romance in Canada is inspired by the ice these days, but for those young adults who aren’t quite ready for the sweat in Heated Rivalry, there’s a new series pushing off this week.
Finding Her Edge is an eight-part series adapted from Jennifer Iacopelli’s novel of the same name and is inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion. It revolves around a young woman named Adriana (played by Jennifer-Lawrence-lookalike Madelyn Keys) who is helping her widowed father, Will (Harmon Walsh), run a financially struggling community rink.
Born into ice dancing royalty, Adriana hung up her skates when she physically outgrew her first partner and boyfriend, Freddie (Olly Atkins). But when family circumstances put the rink in jeopardy, Adriana teams up and begins a fake romance with the “Bad Boy of Skating,” Brayden (Cale Ambrozic), to pull in sponsorships.
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Of course, the fact that her old flame has returned to train with his new partner, Riley (Millie Davis), and has gone through a bit of a growth spurt since the last time Adriana saw him, complicates matters.
“We joked during production that we should rename the show, The Winter Freddie Got Hot,” says showrunner Jeff Norton, who had been specifically looking for a compelling figure skating drama to develop when he came across the manuscript for Iacopelli’s book.
“The show is a fusion of The Summer I Turned Pretty and Friday Night Lights,” he continues. “We have the adult and teenager parallel dynamics of Friday Night Lights, with the kind of love triangle that’s at the centre of Summer.”
While the creative hopes the main love triangle satiates fans looking to fill that romantic void, he adds that the real crux of the series is between Adriana and her two sisters, Maria (Alice Malakhov) and Elise (Alexandra Beaton).
“The family is incredibly fractured, and when you meet them, they’re not in a good place,” he says. “The father hasn’t processed his grief from his wife’s passing, and the sisters are all at odds. The real love triangle is bringing these sisters and the family back together, and I’m hoping that in Episode 8, viewers will bawl their eyes out.”
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Writer Iacopelli wrote the book in lockdown after being inspired by Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s ice dance performance at the 2018 Olympics.Netflix
Casting such a series was a challenge at first, as Norton thought he could find unicorn skaters who could also act. Instead, production casts characters first and then puts everyone through skating boot camp to create realistic scenes. They then hired doubles and digitally replaced their faces to keep cameras as close as possible. Other shots involved putting actors on sleds or finding creative solutions to make them look authentic.
The camera operators and grips also had to skate and they got creative, too, with drones and special angles to achieve the show’s overall look and feel.
“It was definitely a challenge,” Norton says. “We were building the technical stuff as we went because we pivoted on how much skating was going to be in the show and wanted a lot more. But ultimately I think the show is better for it.”
Story-wise, the arc differs from the novel in order to potentially spin future seasons, so most of the initial run involves the sisters talking about qualifying for the Olympics. However, while filming for the Canadian series took place in Ontario cities such as Orillia and Barrie (which doubled as a small town in Massachusetts), production also travelled to Paris, France, in June to film exteriors for an episode about the Worlds. They shot the interiors for that episode at the CAA Centre in Brampton over three days in between wrestling and basketball events.
Production chose that location because it was one of the few large stadiums that allowed them to take the glass down, as is common at major figure skating competitions. Norton then had fun filling the board ads with fictional companies and brands that nod to Jane Austen, like the Sanditon Hotel.
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Elsewhere, Norton and co. paid homage to the real world of skating with special cameos from figures such as Piper Gilles, Paul Poirier and Elvis Stojko.
“In a couple of weeks, everybody’s going to be super excited about figure skating,” says Norton.
He’s speaking, of course, about the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, which take place in February. Part of Norton’s initial pitch to Netflix U.S. (where he had a pre-existing relationship thanks to his work on Geek Girl) and Vancouver’s WildBrain Studios was to have this series ready to go in time for the Games. What he didn’t bargain for was epic snowstorms and a giant power outage that forced production to rely on generators to keep going.
“It’s my own fault, because I pitched this vision of timeless romance, of winter wonderland,” he says. “When we had to start doing the planning, we had to go to Southern Ontario, where we thought we could be guaranteed enough snow.”
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The story arc diverges from the novel, creating the potential for future seasons.Netflix
It was right before last March’s major ice storm that Iacopelli flew to Orillia from her hometown of New York for her cameo. The librarian and author has always been interested in telling stories from the world of women’s sports, and knew her book was in good hands with the fellow scribe.
She reveals she’s had many book option meetings over her 15 years, but this was the first to come to fruition. She recalls Norton pitching her in 2022 and having an actual plan for the show. She liked that he didn’t throw around big names, but instead outlined actionable steps for how Finding Her Edge would become a series.
“I still didn’t believe him because more than one project had never actually happened,” she says. “But I remember getting off the call and telling my agent that it sounds like he could actually get it done. I should have believed in him more, because he followed that exact path and actually did it.”
That trust was huge for Iacopelli, who wrote the book entirely in lockdown after being inspired by Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s ice dance performance at the 2018 Olympics.
“Post-Olympics, the only thing people wanted to talk about was whether or not they were dating,” Iacopelli recalls. “That was the only conversation that seemed to be purveying, despite the fact that these people had just accomplished, like, you know, a two-decade journey toward a gold medal.”
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That story was in her head when she began wondering what that kind of pressure would feel like for a 16-year-old in a financial pinch. She put that idea together with her favourite book, Persuasion, and suddenly it all came together.
“I don’t know if I could ever get back into that mental state, or if I would ever want to, but it saved me at the time,” she says.
Fast forward to this year, and Iacopelli is great with the aforementioned pop culture comparisons to Finding Her Edge. But she reiterates that this story sets itself apart from other series because the protagonist isn’t on a journey to discover herself. Adriana knows what she wants, and her journey is about navigating a path to that goal.
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As for her own goals, Iacopelli says the Netflix series has rejuvenated her career. When she finished writing Finding Her Edge and published it to little fanfare, she faced a crossroad and wondered whether she could keep going.
“Then I had someone who really believed in me with Jeff. Here we are, four years later, and I’m seeing sales numbers we’ve never seen before. We are at a level of bookstore distribution that we just didn’t have before. People love skating, they love romance, and they love Austen. Once people realize this exists, they seem to want to read it,” she says.
Her fingers, like those of everyone else involved, are crossed for a second season. In the meantime, the cast and crew all travelled to Toronto in January for a special screening ahead of the official Jan. 22 launch on Netflix.
“It’s been the most wonderful experience,” Iacopelli says. “I have friends who have been in publishing for a long time who have had their books adapted and not had a good experience. I’ve said it all the way through, the people I work with on this are unicorns. They’ve been wonderful. Maybe it’s a Canadian thing.”
