Bailey Poching
Bailey Poching’s star is on the rise. The Māori-Sāmoan comedian, actor, and filmmaker is appearing in the Netflix comedy North of North*, set in an Indigenous community in Canada and has been touring his solo comedy show,* Doing Great*. He talks to Atakohu Middleton.*
If you ask Bailey Poching what he wants to feel when he’s on the comedy stage, he has two answers.
“The first one is wanting to impress people. I want to prove that I’m good at this thing. That’s like, maybe, the more vulnerable answer.
“But the second one is wanting to connect — wanting to speak to something that we all share but we don’t even realise we share. What’s the silliest way that I can get us all to agree on our experiences of the world?”
Bailey is 28, and shares a bungalow in Mt Albert, Auckland, with three flatmates. His solo stage show Doing Great — billed as “digging into grief, avoidance, and the absurd notion of convincing everyone you’re okay” — debuted in Wellington last year and has just ended its five-night run at Auckland’s Basement. In October, he’s taking the show to the Nelson Arts Festival, and a film version is in the works.
On top of that, Bailey has gained an international profile thanks to the success of the Inuit comedy North of North. The first season is on Netflix, and the second is due out before the end of the year.
The show, set in a small town in the Canadian Arctic, follows a young Inuk mother, Siaja (Anna Lambe), as she publicly exits her marriage to the town’s golden boy and sets about reinventing herself. Bailey plays Colin, a Māori man who has followed his love to the town and works as a DJ on the local radio station.
In North of North, Bailey Poching plays Colin, a community radio DJ, alongside Zorga Qaunaq, who plays colleague Millie. (Photo Netflix)
The show is funny and interesting, and wears its Indigeneity proudly. It’s Netflix’s first original show in Canada, and the first co-production between the streaming giant, the Indigenous broadcaster Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Thanks to North of North, Bailey is financially secure for now. He has an agent in the US, and he’s been auditioning for various roles.
If Bailey’s surname sounds familiar, it’s because his father is Sāmoan rugby league great Willie Poching. That also explains why Bailey grew up in Yorkshire, England, though he was born in Queensland, Australia.
Bailey was a toddler in 1999 when Willie and Bailey’s mum, Maraea (Ngāti Whātua ki Kaipara), moved to England, where Willie played league and then went on to have a successful career as a coach.
They raised Bailey, his older brother William, and the youngest of the trio, Kobe, in Wakefield, which is about the same size as Dunedin.
Bailey was a “loud kid”, obsessed with making people laugh and finding the funniest way to say things. “I’ve always felt like I had a knack for that.”
A theatre kid at school, Bailey’s goal was to try stand-up comedy once he got to uni. Which he did at 18, when he turned up at an open-mic night at Liverpool’s Hot Water Comedy Club, mates in tow, and got the laughs he wanted.
“I loved it! It was surreal to actually be getting laughs in a comedy club,” he says.
Not long after that, he came to Aotearoa on a visit and decided to move here for good. “To have so many brown faces around you and everyone’s laughing — there was a sense of belonging that I hadn’t felt in England. I came home to learn about who I was.”
Bailey’s parents returned to Aotearoa in 2023, after living in the UK for 25 years. Willie does league commentary for Sky Sports and hosts a sports show on Pacific Media Network. Maraea works in hospital administration.
Bailey greatly admires his parents, Maraea and Willie. “They really modelled commitment to each other and to us as well.” (Photo Julie Zhu)
Bailey’s brother William returned last year and works in IT. Kobe is still in the UK, working in the trades, but plans to return, possibly by the end of the year.
It’s now nine years since Bailey settled in Aotearoa, and behind him is a year at film school and a list of New Zealand television credits, among them comedies 7 Days, Small Town Scandal, and Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee. He also picked up an award for the best debut at the 2023 New Zealand International Comedy Fest, appeared in the short film Honey Kaha, and is a member of an improv troupe.
But North by North is his biggest role yet. Bailey is often asked how a Māori-Sāmoan actor ended up in an Inuit drama. In March 2024, he was “desperately looking for work” when his agent called on a Monday morning to say he needed to audition that day for an “untitled Arctic comedy.”
Then came “the craziest two days” as Bailey was asked to provide more tapes and then perform scenes via Zoom to the show’s directors. He got the job on Wednesday, and on Friday, he was on a plane to Canada to start a three-month shoot. “It was surreal,” he says. The series is filmed on a Toronto set and in Iqaluit, the real-life capital of Nunavut.
Why the rush? Bailey understands the character was always going to be Indigenous, but producers had struggled to find Inuk actors for the role, so they broadened the search to pan-Indigenous.
Though Bailey’s character has declared himself to be Māori, and he’s managed one “Kia ora” in season one, his Māori background and backstory aren’t developed until season two.
Filming North by North brought many new experiences, not least the cold. Nunavut freezes for 10 months of the year. On one outdoor shoot, the temperature was approaching minus-40 degrees Celsius.
“We were filming out on the sea ice in that temperature in four layers of pants, three layers of socks, and two layers of gloves under your mitts.”
Bailey on set in Nunavut, Canada, during North of North season 2. (Photo Jasper Savage)
The sitcom presents Indigenous ways of life, such as seal hunting, unfiltered. “Seal hunting is a big part of the community. It’s a survivalist culture, so a lot of these people really know how to handle themselves. They’re really adept, they’re really smart, and they know how to look out for each other.
“Everything they wear, everything they use, everything that they wield, they have to kill for, you know? Their clothes, their tools, all of their food comes from the land, and in an Indigenous way that’s reciprocal and balanced.”
Bailey’s character looks perfectly at home in the Inuit community, and that’s probably because of the similarities with Sāmoan and Māori culture: “Communal values. Don’t cross your aunties. Food is such a big part of celebration. Dancing. Lots of laughing.”
Between seasons, Bailey got back to his own work: “I still need to be generating my own opportunities, and doing live performance is such a cup-filling exercise for me.”
Doing Great is one such opportunity. It’s based on Bailey’s experience of losing his paternal grandmother, Florence, who died in 2022. Having spent so much time with her after moving to Aotearoa, and helping to look after her, her loss hit hard.
Bailey’s grandparents, Eddie and Florence Poching.
“She represented so much of my heritage, my identity, my relationship with my father,” he says. “That time I got with her was the greatest amount of time that I ever got to spend with a grandparent.”
The catalyst for Doing Great was Bailey’s cousin, Ainsleigh Laumatia, who’s a GP. The two were out for dinner a couple of months after Florence died, when Ainsleigh asked Bailey how he was. Bailey replied that he was “doing great” and “very busy.”
Ainsleigh wasn’t convinced, and Bailey had to admit he’d been avoiding his grief by burying himself in work. “That was a real eye-opening moment for me, that I could hide from myself so adeptly. I was so good at running away from myself. We all are in so many ways.”
Doing Great isn’t therapy on stage — that wouldn’t be good for comedians or audiences, says Bailey. “It’s an emotionally challenging show, but it’s more of a reflection of a difficult time of my life rather than reliving it. Because I’m a craftsperson, I write, and I have all of these tools at my disposal to present these feelings in a way that’s safe.”
As to what audiences might take from the show, Bailey says: “I never claim to be smart enough to teach anyone anything with my art, but I always approach the storytelling like I’m cooking a meal for everybody.
“I want there to be some sense of satisfaction and some sense of warmth. I want the audience to feel like I’ve cooked everybody a meal and we can sit around the table and enjoy it together.”
Bailey Poching in character for his solo show Doing Great.
The first season of North of North is now on Netflix. Season 2 will be available in Aotearoa later this year.
Bailey Poching (@broozer_) performs Doing Great as part of the Nelson Arts Festival at The Boathouse, Nelson, on October 29, 2026. Tickets here.
The post Bailey Poching is doing great appeared first on E-Tangata.
From E-Tangata via This RSS Feed.