Last Spring, Shane mentioned that Lenore Zann reprised her epic role of Rogue in an animated variant of X-Men and then attended Toronto Comicon to meet and greet fans. She’s certainly been busy for a long time, haven gotten back into acting after being a member of parliament and a member of legislature. After all that moving around, Lenore finally took some time to write and publish a book about her perspective into Hollywood, her struggles, and all kinds of stories about her life. It’s called A Rogue’s Tale: A Memoir and while I haven’t yet read it myself (because I have been super busy myself these past couple of months), but I’m planning to real soon as a long period of recuperating is just what I’m ready for. Anyways, before I get into reading that, I have some more reading material that might interest you: For what may be the first time ever on HNMAG: a Super Exclusive Interview, with one of the greatest Canadian actresses of all time: Lenore Zann. So brew some tea, get ready to read a lovely long article, about Lenore and her new book, and let’s learn. 
HNMAG: A Rogue’s Tale, the book you just published talks about your journey through Hollywood and also explains struggles and what it was like in the 80’s. What inspired you to write these memoirs?
Lenore Zann: Well, I’ve lived quite a colourful life, and throughout my years people have said, “You know you really need to write your memoir, because we would find it fascinating.” But I have been so busy for the past 45 years I haven’t had time to write until recently. It took me about 2 years to write my memoir, I did it after the pandemic. I had been in government working as a member of the legislative assembly in Nova Scotia and a member of parliament in Ottawa for 12 years altogether. Then there was an election held after the pandemic and I lost the seat so I thought “Now I have time to write a book.” Within about a month’s time of that election loss, I got a call from Disney/Marvel asking me to come back and portray Rogue from X-Men: Animated Series in a new show called X-Men 97. I thought “Wow, you never know what’s gonna happen in your life” One door closes and another opens and my life is really like that throughout the whole time. I thought this would be a good chance to tell people not to give up hope and just keep going because you never know what’s coming around the next corner.
HNMAG: Did you read other books and memoirs to get a feel of how to share your experiences?
Lenore Zann: Not really, no. I’m a writer, I wrote a play back in the 2000’s that was done in New York. I performed it myself, and also played it in Halifax where I had been living. But I did it for a year in New York and got great reviews from people saying they loved my writing. I’ve been writing short stories and poetry for many years, and when I was in government I wrote most of my own speeches. So I felt like I had a really good handle on writing. Over the years I’ve read a few memoirs, but didn’t feel the need to delve into other memoirs. I just wanted to tell my story.
HNMAG: Why did you choose a book? Do you feel those reach people better than other forms of media?
Lenore Zann: Well, yes. I think that reading and books are incredibly important still to connect people with ideas and concepts and to paint a picture in their own mind with their own imagination. Just drawn by the words. For instance, when I’m performing and doing X-Men: The Animated Series, I read a script. It starts with the script, if the script is good and you got a good cast of good actors, then we can turn those words into living and breathing entities and we can tell the story. That’s why I feel writing is so important and throughout history storytellers have been very important to society. That is my job to tell my story as an actor.
HNMAG: In the book, A Rogues’ Tale, it talks about how you met legendary figures like Steven Spielberg, and Keanu Reeves and other people. What’s a memorable story from those encounters?
Lenore Zann: To be honest, I met so many incredible people throughout my career. Meeting Steven Spielberg was a real honour and that was when I was in my early 20’s. He had seen my work on an acting reel and asked to meet with me because he was casting for a new movie he was doing at the time called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I showed him a picture of me as Marilyn Monroe in the red sequinned dress, I had just played her in a rock opera called The Life of Marilyn Monroe. It was really interesting and we spent about an hour together but in the end he cast Kate Capshaw who ended up becoming his wife. In the movie, I noticed she’s wearing a red sequinned outfit in the first scene. He didn’t use me for that film, but he did tell these other casting people in New York about me. Then they asked to meet with me and I signed a deal to do a television series called Love, Sydney with Tony Randall. At the 11th hour, the deal fell through because the moral majority then with Jerry Falwell were so against anything to do with homosexuality, someone being gay with abortion, having a child out of wedlock and the show was originally supposed to be about an older gay man who befriends a young actress from Canada. She moves into his apartment but ends up getting pregnant by some young man. She wants an abortion, but the man offers to help raise it up because he always wanted a child.
Of course, if that series did happen the moral majority back then would boycott the show and all of NBC. The script was just about an older man and a woman in her 30’s with an 8 year old child. Not exactly the same, but the original would’ve been ahead of its time given it would be in 1982. Lenore was disappointed and there’s plenty more details in her book, like how she transitioned from singing to acting.
HNMAG: Did any of those encounters happen to be on your bucket list and were the people who you expected them to be?
Lenore Zann: Yeah, I think so. Keanu Reeves is just a lovely human being, I really enjoyed meeting him, and spending time having a romantic weekend. Also Andy Gibb who was the younger brother of the Bee Gees. I met him when he was 24 before he died sadly at the age of 30. We did a show together called Something’s Afoot, where I played opposite of him and Gene Stapleton who was also a fantastic person and a great actress/singer. I met Tiny Tim in Australia, we got to perform I wanna be loved by you, with me dressed as Marilyn Monroe sitting on his knee with him playing his ukulele and us singing that to each other for television. Also Craig Russell who was a female impersonator from Canada who moved to LA and impersonated all kinds of incredible female stars. The first time I came to Los Angeles, I was only 20 years old. Craig brought me out to visit and showed me basically the gay underbelly of Los Angeles that was early 80’s and it was an eye opener. I’ll tell you that much. We had just an amazing amount of fun. Sadly he is now gone too, but all of these different encounters affected me in various ways. I learned a lot about life and the arts, politics, and also just how to be a great human and give kindness and love to the people around us.
HNMAG: And those encounters also helped you find some interesting opportunities.
Lenore Zann: That’s right. Exactly.
HNMAG: What lessons did you learn from Hollywood figures like Sam Rockwell and Lou Gossett Jr that shaped your journey?
Lenore Zann: When I met Sam Rockwell, we were both doing theatre in New York. He wasn’t a Hollywood figure at that time, we did a play called Unidentified Human Remains in the True Nature of Love, which was by Brad Fraser, a Canadian Playwright. I had done the play in Toronto several times and had been performing for 9 months. American producers saw the show, bought the rights for the show, and brought me as the only Canadian to Chicago to star in the show and to New York after that off broadway. That’s where I met Sam who was my boyfriend in the play. I also met John Paul Esposito because he was doing theatre as well. Clark Gregson was in the show for a while so I went back and forth to other people’s plays. They came to see my play, we’re all hanging out together at different times. Being in the theatre in New York, you feel like you’re in a big family. I’d started off in theatre at the age of 16, became professional at 17 and was cast to star in a Marilyn Monroe Rock Opera when I was 19. So I am really a theatre baby. The movies and television stuff came later as it did for many of those actors in theatre.
HNMAG: Have you ever been a mentor to anyone and gave them the lessons you learned in your past?
Lenore Zann: I have been a mentor for people who are struggling with addiction issues. I’m a proud member of AA, I got sober 28 years ago in Los Angeles on Martin Luther King Blvd when people came and basically saved MY life and gave me the will to live instead of succumbing to my disease. They taught me that I didn’t know how to love myself and I really needed to start feeling comfortable in my own skin without having to need a substance to make me feel like I was okay. That was a profound moment in my life, I was 36, the same age Marilyn Monroe was when she succumbed to an overdose of alcohol and drugs.
As Lenore mentioned, she played Marilyn Monroe when she started, and then did so again at the age of 27 so it was very moving for her to realize she was falling down the same path Marilyn did. When Lenore decided to quit, it was a choice of life or death, and obviously the bravest option was living. By quitting drinking, she signed up for AA, and got her life turned around. Therefore, she helps people struggling with addictions, as it makes her most happy to get them out of that dark cavern. A Rogue’s Tale offers inspiration as well. Yes, this book is going to be mentioned a fair amount. Have you considered buying it yet?
HNMAG: Did you even manage to include these lessons or even some powerful sayings from these people in your book?
Lenore Zann: Absolutely, it’s definitely part of my story, I believe if you’re going to tell or write a memoir, you might as well include it warts and all. It was pretty dire there for some time, I was suicidal, at the end of my tether and ready to throw it all in. But for the grace of God, I turned a corner and I’m still here now to tell my tale.
HNMAG: You’re well known for playing the voice of Rogue in some of the X-men animated series. How did you manage to get that role?
Lenore Zann: Well, I’ve been acting for some time in theatre and film and television. I had won an award for my voice for Best Actor in a radio drama in Canada when I was 26 and so my agent at the time told me, “Lenore, there’s this animation project. They’re looking for an actress who can do a Southern accent and they want somebody with a low husky sexy voice. That’s you!” I go down and audition for this animation series. Now, I wasn’t really that interested in animation at the time as I considered myself a “serious actress”. So I didn’t actually go and audition that particular time. But a month later, my agent called saying, “Lenore. They’re having callbacks for that same role I told you about. They haven’t found the right actress because it’s you! So get your ass in gear, get down there, and audition.” so that time I said, “Okay, I’ll go down.” and I went down to the studio, I didn’t know anything about the show because they didn’t tell us. They called it Project X and there was a picture of the character drawn, and she looked so sassy and sexy, I just went “I think I can play that character.” so I read the little description about her, went in the booth, put the headphones on. The producers were in Los Angeles and I read the first little paragraph that they’d given me and it was “My daddy liked to kill himself when he found out I was a mutant” and I heard this scream on the other end of the phone from all these men in LA and they said, “Don’t let her leave the building, THAT IS Rogue! That’s the voice we’ve been waiting for.” And that’s how I became Rogue.
HNMAG: How has portraying Rogue impacted you personally, and what do fans share with you about the character?
Lenore Zann: Well, I use a lot of myself in the character of Rogue, I like to say playing Rogue is like pulling on a pair of fine well-worn very comfortable gloves. She is part of me and I am part of her. She inspires people to be themselves, to learn how to accept themselves as they are, and I believe I do that as well. There’s an episode in the first series called ‘The Cure’ where Rogue decides to get rid of her superpowers because of course, they make her very sad. They’re painful because she can never touch anybody skin to skin or else she’ll drain them of all their life force and take it upon herself and become stronger. By doing so, she puts them into a coma or kills them. She always has to have her guard up and she can never let herself fall in love or afford herself to be intimate with anybody. That’s why she wants to get rid of her powers at one point, but in the course of that episode, she realizes that it’s her superpowers that make her unique and who she is. In the end she says, “I reckon I am my powers and the good they can do. And I reckon I can live with that. There ain’t no cure for who you are.” I loved that and I really think that has helped people tell me when they were kids in the 90’s, and they heard that it made them feel like “Yeah, Okay. It’s okay to be myself, it’s okay to be different.” and many people in the LGBTQ community really related to Rogue and still do for all of these reasons. So I feel honoured to play a character that can inspire people to be their authentic selves and not be afraid to be who they are.
HNMAG: What about the other versions of Rogue? Do you find them to be similar to your portrayal in some positive ways?
Lenore Zann: To be honest, the only other one I’ve seen was the first movie of X-Men and they had changed Rogue and made her really more like Jubilee. I believe to think they were going for an age demographic at that time, and they made her very young with a relationship with Wolverine like Jubilee had and she just wasn’t just as feisty and strong as the Rogue that we all know and love from the comics. I don’t blame the actor, I blame the writing and the direction. It’s a shame that they didn’t allow Rogue to be the character that she normally is.
HNMAG: Now onto how you played Marilyn Monroe on stage when you started out, gaining insight of her strength and vulnerability. Was there anything you learned about her that surprised you the most?
Lenore Zann: Yeah. It was interesting that Marilyn Monroe created her own persona of Marilyn. Her mother was in a mental institution, she was brought up by foster parents, and she was very unhappy and not really loved. She was abused and sexually assaulted along the way, so when she became older and wanted to be an actress, she created this persona of Marilyn Monroe. She could put it on and off, most of the time when she wanted to. But it made her a star, it made her famous, it gave her money, it gave her a sex-symbol that all men wanted to have her. But it didn’t bring her happiness, and I think that was a lesson that I learnt from both reading about Marilyn but then also my own struggles with addiction because she then used alcohol and drugs to make herself feel comfortable in her own skin. She never really learnt to love herself and one thing I’ve learned from being an alcoholic and getting sober is when you have a void inside of yourself, you tend to try and fill it up with outside things. It can be food, alcohol, or drugs, it can be shopping, gambling, going into debt. There are so many things that people can become addicted to. But it’s all to try and fill up this empty hollow feeling inside. that we are not enough and need to fill that void. But filling it with outer trappings does not work, the only thing that will actually heal that void and help us to become fully fledged and authentic in who we are is self-acceptance and self-love.
Marilyn’s addiction sadly took her down before she could get to that point, and Lenore told me how she found that really sad. I have to admit, I had no idea myself and it saddened me too. It’s times like these I’m glad my so-called addiction is a somewhat obscure Romanian singer and I can only find merch of him once in a blue moon.
HNMAG: What aspects of Marilyn Monroe’s character did you connect with most and how did you bring her to life on stage?
Lenore Zann: I connected with her loneliness, and I connected with her desire to please people. I have a natural sexuality that comes through in my performances and that I was able to connect with on a deep level with Marilyn. Once I put the gown on, the sequins, the boa, and then the wig, then makeup, I became Marilyn.
HNMAG: How did fans and other people react? Did they feel you portrayed her accurately?
Lenore Zann: People who saw the show said it was uncanny and I managed to manifest Marilyn Monroe in front of their very eyes. Actually, I’ll make it more interesting, because after I made a big splash in Canada with this portrayal, I was approached by people in New York about coming to New York where they wanted to talk to me about playing Marilyn Monroe there. I went down to New York and they put me up at the Waldorf Astoria, gave me a beautiful suite and had all these people talking to me there about what I could do as Marilyn Monroe. To be honest, in the end, it boiled down to the fact that they wanted me to become just like a Marilyn Monroe lookalike who would go on shows with Jerry Lewis and Frank Sinatra and do some sort of skits and stuff as Marilyn. But I said, “y’know, I’m not just Marilyn, I’m an actor. I play a number of different roles, I’m going to be stuck and typecast in this role which Marilyn herself tried to get out of.” In the end, I didn’t follow up on that.
HNMAG: Marilyn Monroe and Rogue are both complex characters. How do you relate to their strength and vulnerability in your own life?
Lenore Zann: As I’ve said, I am a strong person but I’m also very empathetic. I care about people a lot, I care about trying to make life better for other people, and trying to help people accept themselves for who they are. In this day and age right now, we’re dealing with a lot of attacks on people for their gender or people that want to express themselves for who they are. There are other people who are trying to stop them from doing that. My motto has always been ‘live and let live’ and so my empathic side is very much in tune with the people who are feeling that they’re oppressed. That hurts, and one of the reasons I went into politics later on is to make life better for all people. That continues to be something I strive to do.
HNMAG: And what did either of these characters teach you about self-acceptance?
Lenore Zann: They both taught me a lot, I had to reach a point where I realized I needed to accept myself in order to move forward. Having played Marilyn at the beginning of my career, and then in the middle, then playing Rogue, and now again and coming back for a whole new generation of fans, as well as the kids from the 90’s who are adults and many of whom have their own children, introducing them to the show. Its also given me a new lease on life to share my experience, strength, and hope with others.
HNMAG: So you’re still going strong, and continuing your roles. That is what inspires you to keep going?
Lenore Zann: Yeah, I mean I’m back playing Rogue again in X-Men 97, and now because of the Internet and social media, we are able to see and talk to fans via social media but also through the Comic-Con circuit which I’ve been on. I called it my Rogue goes Rogue Comic-Con tour 2024. It took me all the way around the world across North America, to New Zealand, and Australia.
In fact, when I was talking to Lenore, she told me how she had just returned from Australia and how she had been meeting fans of the original show, and the new show which got nominated for an Emmy Award, specifically one of the Rogue-centric episodes called “Remember it” and the show also was nominated for the Astra Award for Best Voice Actor, for Lenore of course. If you ask me, she is classified as one of the best in my opinion, and I mean that with sincerity.
HNMAG: You started out in theatre, but eventually got into film and tv. How did you transition?
Lenore Zann: Because of Marilyn (laughs) I was only 19=20 when I played Marilyn and the movies and television offers just started piling in. Then, eventually I did radio drama as well in my 20’s and won an ACTRA award for that. Then still continue doing television and then the X-Men Animated was the second one I had ever done and I just kept working until I was 49, then chose to run for politics.
HNMAG: You’ve also been a member of the Legislature for Nova Scotia, and a Member of Parliament. Did that mean taking a break from film work?
Lenore Zann: Yes, that’s right. I was elected for four terms, 12 years in total.
HNMAG: Is there one particular role you would really like to do one day or has it already been done?
Lenore Zann: No, I’d like to see my book produced as a feature film and I have some ideas about who would be great to play me in my 20’s. I was thinking somebody like Florence Pugh would be good. There are a number of young actresses that would be great for the role, but I’d like to see that done. There are roles in that I could play as well.
Lenore is an amazing person and will continue to be amazing as she continues the role of Rogue, and I hope to see her in some more roles very soon. Who knows? Maybe she’ll do some other things do, because no matter what age you may be, nobody is ever too old to learn new things. I say this as I have a close personal friend and while spending time with him and his lovely family for a few days, I taught them how to set up their projector, where to look for convenient tech, and other helpful tips. Back to the main point, not only have I learned that with Lenore Zann, I’ve learned a lot about her and I’m very impressed. Next year, I’m going to go learn even more about Lenore by reading this book and recommend you do too. A Rogue’s Tale can be found and bought at Nimbus, Indigo, or even Atlantic Books. There are order options on Amazon as well, so don’t delay, buy it today, that’s what I say!