Are you longing for another Canadian, ice-based romance after your latest Heated Rivalry rewatch? Finding Her Edge dropped last week on Netflix, and this high-stakes teen drama has a juicy love triangle that will keep you watching. 

Based on the 2022 novel of the same name, and inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion, the series follows the Russo sisters—heirs to a struggling figure skating dynasty. The story is centred on middle sister Adriana, as she finds herself torn between figure skating bad-boy Brayden, and her former skating partner and first love, Freddie. When Adriana fakes a relationship with Brayden to draw sponsors to her family’s struggling rink, real feelings start to blossom. There’s family drama, cinematic skating sequences, and plenty of passion—both on and off the ice.


Filmed in Ontario and led by a Canadian creative team, Finding Her Edge is truly a showcase of Canadian talent—with a cast including beloved Canadian star Alexandra Beaton and Alice Malakhov as the eldest and youngest Russo sisters. 

Bringing Adriana to life is Ottawa native Madelyn Keys. In an interview with SheDoesTheCity, Keys spoke about the love triangle at the heart of the show, preparing to play a pro figure skater, and the day that everyone on set had a tiara.

Finding Her Edge is based on the book by Jennifer Iacopelli. Did this play a role in how you prepared to play Adriana? 

As soon as I learned there was a book, I got it and I got my highlighter out, and did the same thing with Jane Austen’s Persuasion as well. The things that I ended up taking were more so, how do we make this character a little more well-rounded? What are her thoughts in these moments? How does she feel about these people generally? I became quite good friends with the author who wrote the book our show is based on, so if there was ever a question, I could go to her directly.

At the heart of this story is a love triangle with your character and her two love interests. What can viewers expect when it comes to the romance in Finding Her Edge?

We are in the PG genre, so it’s still a degree of romance you can watch with your whole family in the room. I think Adriana is really at a crossroads. There are two incredible choices of boys who want to be with her, who could offer her very different kinds of relationships. Adriana has to figure out, not only which one does she like more in the moment, but which version of herself does she really want to be, and what is she ready for?

There are so many iconic teen love triangles—do you have a favourite?

There are absolutely some classics. I think of Twilight, I think of The Hunger Games. I think of The Summer I Turned Pretty. I like a love story when the protagonists have more than just their love life being the center of their story. To me, if there’s only the love story happening, I can’t actually root for anybody, because I don’t think they would have healthy relationships. I want them to be more than that. 

The series is described as a teen drama, but do you think it will resonate with viewers of different ages?

I really hope so. I think one of the really beautiful things about our show is that it is more than just that love triangle. Harmon, my father Will in the show, and Meredith, my coach, I think they have some really beautiful scenes together, delving into loss and parenting and what it means to try and raise adults, as they as they put it, versus raising kids. I would really encourage people to see if you can watch this show with your mother, or with a sister, with a friend of yours, and just see if there are different things that each of you take from it.

The sisterhood between the Russo girls is another thing we love about the show. What was it like for you to work with Alexandra and Alice and play out that sisterhood on screen?

A dream. It was incredible. I  am an only child in real life, and both Alice and Alex have sisters. But I think we all got close really quickly, especially on a show like this. We’re filming on location. All of us are away from our families. We’re not going home with people very frequently, and so you get to build your own real family. The amount of time we spent together, plus our predisposition to loving each other’s personalities really added to that. I have learned so much from the both of them, and I am just so thrilled that my name gets to be beside theirs, because they’re so cool.

Let’s talk about the figure skating of it all. What did you learn about the world of figure skating while working on Finding Her Edge?

In a sentence, that it’s so much broader than I had ever imagined. I came into this knowing how to skate, always being on figure skates versus hockey skates. But there’s so much that goes into ice dance in particular, there are a whole bunch of muscles that I was not used to using, there are different ways to learn choreography. I think too, I hadn’t heard much about the different stigmas that ice dancers can face versus pair skaters or single skaters. There is a reputation that it’s not as difficult, and therefore shouldn’t deserve the same respect. And also the difficulty that comes from judging being partially subjective—ice dance has a whole artistic component that scores not only the choreography, but the passion, the costumes.

What sort of prep went into making sure your skating scenes looked authentic?

Very quickly after I got this role, they started getting me on ice with incredible coaches who would teach us, not only some of the foundational steps, but also how can we best cheat this? How can we make this look as smooth as possible, so that in the times when we do transition to our incredible skating doubles, that looks realistic as well. Of course, we had our doubles, who are world-class athletes. Being able to learn from them—and specifically, developing close enough relationships where they feel totally comfortable to come up to us and be like, no, no, you’re doing it wrong, let me help you—felt really fun.

Was there a particular storyline from the series that you really enjoyed shooting?

One of my favourite days, honestly of my life, was shooting the princess skate in episode three. The three sisters have been hired to perform at a young girl’s birthday party. They show up and they are given princess outfits and are kind of expected to be party favours. They have some very strong feelings about that. But ultimately, the show has to go on. We had so much fun that day. The whole cast and crew was in on it. We showed up to set, and everyone was giving out tiaras. Like, how silly is that? What a fun thing to do. It felt like we had formed this really fun community, and we were all enjoying what we were doing, which was dressing up as princesses and skating around in this beautiful pink rink.

Finding Her Edge was made right here in Canada, and with Heated Rivalry blowing up the way it is, what do you think is so special about bringing Canadian stories like this to a wider audience?

I’m so entirely thrilled that these teams of people are getting the recognition that they deserve. But I also think it’s important to point out that Canadian media has been everywhere, all the time. Heated Rivalry, for example—they’re mentioning Canadian cities. Shane is from Ottawa (like me!). I think when people are watching a lot of content, they don’t actually realize that so much of it is Canadian. It’s wonderful that we are getting more of that recognition. I’m thrilled that other people love ice sports as much as we do, and I’m also excited for the future where they love stuff that we make that is not ice sports related as well.

This is a big role for you. What does it mean to you to be able to take on the lead role of this series?

It has been such a privilege to film and be on set every day and be a part of this crew. I’m so grateful that they took a chance on me. There is another world in which you hire somebody that has more of a proven track record or more followers to accompany the show. I’m really grateful that they decided that I was worth that risk, and I  hope I get the opportunity to do it again.

Finding Her Edge is streaming now on Netflix. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.