Spokane tribal member, ‘Nana Anuk’ on ‘Z Nation’ series dies Saturday after bout with cancer

Darlene McCarty, a member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians and Makah Tribe who earned international fame for a late-life grandmotherly performance in the zombie TV series “Z Nation” shot locally, died Saturday. She was 77.

“Monday night, we tucked her in all comfy, and she was laughing,” Barbara Gongyin, McCarty’s daughter, said in a phone interview Sunday morning. McCarty had received surgery and treatment for several different types of cancer, and had just recently returned from a trip to San Francisco with her granddaughter.

“San Francisco is one of her favorite cities,” said Symetria Gongyin, her granddaughter. The pair crossed the Golden Gate bridge, went to Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown on her last excursion before returning to hospice care in Spokane.

Fans of the SyFy series, filmed in Spokane and airing from 2014-18, mourned McCarty’s death on a social media post by her family. McCarty was an avid pen pal and tried to answer all letters she received personally from fans of the show, Symetria Gongyin said. When she went shopping, McCarty would pick up gifts for fans who’d written her.

“She would say, ‘I’m getting this for my friend, I need to mail it to her,’ ” Symetria Gongyin said. “I knew that she would be talking about a pen pal.”

Born Jan. 10, 1945, McCarty studied drama and creative writing at the Institute for American Indian Arts, which at the time was a boarding school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1960s. But it wasn’t until friends encouraged her to try out for the role of Nana Anuk, an Indigenous, pipe-toting grandmother of the character “Kaya,” that McCarty pursued professional acting.

“When I realized ‘Z Nation’ was a zombie show, I thought, ‘I don’t know what I’m getting myself into,’ ” McCarty said in an interview in February 2021. “After the first day, I said, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing?’ ”

Her character, who didn’t speak but conveyed emotion through facial expressions and her pipe, became a favorite of fans of the show. And McCarty enjoyed corresponding with them, even after the show was canceled after five seasons.

Services are pending, but the family said they plan to hold a memorial in Spokane as well as a traditional wake in Wellpinit, on the Spokane Tribe’s reservation. McCarty will be buried there alongside family members. Fans are encouraged to visit McCarty’s social media pages, including the Twitter handle @NanaAnuk, for information on memorials and to leave their memories of her.

“We know that this is something that she would really appreciate, having the chance to tell everybody that she loves them,” Symetria Gongyin said.