The world of Anna Pigeon is full of interesting characters, and the USA show is gradually throwing a spotlight on all of them. Frieda, played by Crystle Lightning, has already spent most of an episode wrangling angry phone calls and revealed that she can rap. Christina, portrayed by Nikki Hallow, has a knack for pie-making and very specific dish stacking. They’re fun characters, but what goes into bringing them to life?

In an interview with TVBrittanyF.com, Crystle and Nikki explained how they perceive their characters and develop them beyond being just comic relief. They also spoke about the collaborative process on set and behind the scenes to bring Anna Pigeon to life. Plus, what’s been the most fun for them during the first season?

Brittany Frederick: Crystle, fans learned in Episode 3 that Frieda can rap. You’ve worked off-Broadway, so was that rap something you suggested or did the creative team come to you with the idea?

Crystle Lightning: It was kind of a collaborative thing. They said Frieda is in the talent show, so I pitched maybe I could rap, sing, and they were like, let’s see what you got. So my husband and I got together—my husband’s a master writer—and he wrote the song “I Love Birds.” I pitched it to them and they loved it, because I still kept it in the realm of Frieda. She loves the park. She loves birds. And so we wrote something about birds, and it was so much fun. I absolutely loved doing it.

She provides such great comic relief in the world of Anna Pigeon, but how do you describe her? Because it’s important that she’s not just there to be funny when Anna’s in the office.

She’s a human being, and I love that. I get to have a perspective, my perspective on this already fun and interesting, quirky woman. Of course she is sitting at the desk all day, [but] I think she really does enjoy her job. It’s exciting. She gets all the calls. She knows all the tea about everybody.

I really feel like the glasses help. I’m really, really grateful that [executive producer] Lea [Thompson] let me wear these ridiculous glasses in the show, because I feel like it just adds on. When I don’t have the glasses, I can’t see as much, but as soon as I put them on I’m like, I can see everything… I just think she’s so much fun I love her quirkiness and her humor and I think that we all have our our fun quirky things, and Frieda has the glasses.

Nikki Hallow: Frieda’s desk has just as much personality as Frieda. There are so many little knick-knacks and things that are all over the desk that are so full of color. It’s awesome.

Nikki, Christina’s introduction was kind of the opposite, as we learned in the series premiere that she’d lost someone she loved. Fans haven’t gotten to know as much about her yet. What would you say is important to know about her?

Hallow: Christina is so full of love to give. She really just wants to take care of people. I think similar to Frieda, she just really wants to be a source of support in a lot of ways that she necessarily didn’t feel like she had in her own past. Fans of the books will really understand that. I don’t want to give anything away.

But I think coming into the park, trying to find her own place, and still come into herself—[she’s] feeling like she actually has an opportunity to be who she is, and represent herself in the way that she wants to be… She’s also funny and silly, which is great. But Christina has some unexpected challenges yet to come.

Another of her early scenes in Episode 2 is when she shows up on Anna’s porch, with the entire gang, holding a pie. So would you say Christina is the den mother of this group?

Absolutely. She’s a mom, right? And moms just inherently have that understanding and and want to take care of other people. She’s got the huckleberry pie she’s so excited to share. And I think in a way, the more she can help take care of Anna and the other park rangers with Frieda and with everyone else, it really allows her to feel that sense of purpose and that sense of place, especially when she’s trying to find herself again.

Tracy [Spiridakos] does such an excellent job as well in that moment [with the pie]. You see her be like, oh God, and then I love the cut down to tugging at the shirt. It’s just such a funny moment of being like, I’m not wearing pants. [Laughs.]

Do either of you have favorite moments from the rest of Anna Pigeon that you want the audience to look forward to?

Lightning: For me, there’s two. I really love doing the talent show scene, just for personal reasons. I love doing music and being able to bring something that I actually had a part in creating, which was really awesome. And then my next favorite scene is later on in the show, so I can’t really talk about that one, but you’ll see [in] Episode 8. It’s a really nice surprise. Something that I don’t think anybody would ever expect.

Hallow: I have a few as well. That’s definitely one of them. That’s definitely an absolute highlight for me. And then something that’s coming up in Episode 4—the game. That was a really big highlight for me. That whole that section was just an absolute blast.

And when we spread the ashes in Episode 1, that was a really big heart moment. That was a really big, beautiful heart moment. I really love all the group scenes. I love all the the individual scenes too, but there’s some group scenes which meant we all got to be together, and it was just this coming together, this joining of the family that felt so right. Not just with the cast, but also the crew.

That’s been something that comes through to people watching the show. There’s a real sense of fun and camaraderie. So what’s been the most fun for you about your Anna Pigeon experience so far?

Hallow: It was like being on vacation. That’s the wildest thing to say when you’re going to work, but every time we would go back to the park and we would go back together, and you’re with all of the cast and the crew and the production team and the producers and Lea, it just felt like coming home in the best way.

I love working in this business, I love what we do, but sometimes you’re just really exhausted, and I’d always get invigorated by being there, which is not something I can say about every project I’ve done. But every time we got together, it was just so fun and so supportive and so collaborative and so playful.

And we wanted to spend time together. We would spend time together when we were done filming. We would all go out for dinner together, or even just a late night coffee, or we’d watch baseball games together… Actors, our job is to fake that kind of chemistry, but we didn’t need to. It was just there.

Lightning: It was just there. We’re going on hikes together. We’re hanging out. We’re running our lines. We’re upstairs in Nikki’s room, visiting her kitty cats. Cooking for each other. We really do have that natural chemistry with each other. And there’s also the playful joke-ness—the sarcasm between Ronnie [Rowe Jr.] and Tracy—and that’s also a lot of fun to watch.

Speaking of other projects, you’ve both done a lot of guest star roles on other TV shows, so in terms of acting process, how is it to do Anna Pigeon and spend more time delving into the layers of these characters?

Lightning: That’s one of my most favorite parts of of being an actor, is the backstory and developing a character and creating something. Not just like you said, a guest star role or doing a film, but with TV series, you really can go deep, and have subtext coming from certain places for these types of conversations. I think that part is so much fun, the character building and the backstory.

Hallow: There’s also such great source material. Nevada Barr, the book series is just such excellent source material. It’s so much fun to read. It’s so much fun to engage with… I’m a voracious reader. I rip through books, and it was so exciting to be able to talk to each other and talk to [Anna Pigeon showrunner] Morwyn [Brebner] and Lea and our other castmates, and be like, what do you think about this moment? How does this make you feel? And having such a collaborative team.

I remember going to Morwyn and being like hey, you know what? I just thought about this thing, and I was wondering what you thought about that. Next day [there were] adjustments, and it was like, oh wow. They were so open to how we wanted to build those characters.

I remember asking Lea, I had a thought about this moment, and she would ask me questions… She was like, okay, why this? And I was like, okay, yeah, so I think about this, and she’s like okay, and what about that? The pulling of the thread together just made it so much more exciting.

We talked about this a lot on set as as cast members.—I know Crystal and I talked about this—where you want to really do it justice because Nevada did such an excellent job, and Morwyn was bringing it to life. You want to do it justice in a way that the fans are going to be happy about. And then also me as a reader and you as a reader, Crystal, and the cast as readers—how are we interpreting things differently or similarly? That was just such an exciting element, and so fingers crossed that we get to do that so much more, and bring the family back together.

Lightning: There’s already a beautiful base for the character, and now we are allowed to paint our characters and decorate, and add our own little flairs to the characters as actors. That’s really fun.

Hallow: That’s such a good example. It’s almost like a paint by number, but you get to choose the colors.

I really enjoyed the books… Morwyn did such an excellent job of bringing it to life, and obviously there’s little changes here and there, but I think they did it in such a lovely way that if anything, you’re like that’s new and that’s exciting.

I’ve had that, where I read a book and you watch the TV series or the movie and you’re like, dang, why’d you do that? I didn’t do that with this. I just got more and more excited, because it just opens up so many doors, and they don’t give everything away, which actually makes you be like, when is that going to come in? Oh, that wasn’t in this. Oh, they brought it in later. It made me more excited to see where the thing was going to come in because they’re not just putting it in; they’re sprinkling it here and there while still honoring the books in a really great way.

Is there anything you want to say to Anna Pigeon fans as the season continues? Anything else you want them to know about the show?

Lightning: I think that it’s such a big deal for [Frieda] being an Indigenous woman. In the books, [she] was not written as Indigenous, and I really love that I get to add a little bit of something to a character that was already really fun and quirky.

But she’s not being a stereotypical Indigenous person. I just get to play a human being who happens to be Indigenous—and that’s a big step for us as Indigenous people, because we haven’t had the biggest platforms, and if we do, they’re always stereotypical. On the back of a horse and [wearing] buckskin. Frieda just gets to be a person, and I really love that Lea and Morwyn created that space for us, and for the young ones to see the representation on a hit TV show, that there’s Indigenous characters that are just normal people. It’s important.

Anna Pigeon airs Fridays at 10:00 p.m. on USA. Photo Credit: Michelle Faye/Courtesy of Versant Media.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.