Lenore Zann Tells Everything Always Rogue Is in for a 'Bumpy Ride' in X-Men '97 Season 2

Lenore Zann, the voice of Rogue, told me that the character's second season of X-Men '97 puts her through an emotional roller coaster and some very difficult decisions. Her advice to fans: "I think you should buckle up your seat belts because you're in for a bumpy ride."

When this interview was published, season 2 was already available on Disney Plus. It was an honor to talk with her about Rogue, the voice she built in the 1990s, her parallel career in politics, and the advice she gives young artists.

Returning to Rogue after 25 years felt natural to Lenore Zann

I started by asking about the phone call that brought her back to the character, and whether she felt any trepidation about revisiting the classic animated X-Men series. Zann said that playing Rogue for the second time in her life is "kind of like pulling on a pair of well-worn, very comfortable gloves," because the character is right there and fits her so perfectly.

She was excited when she got the call. Getting to play a superhero like Rogue once is a dream for most actors, she said, but getting to play her twice, with a gap of 25 years in between, was unbelievable to her. She loved the scripts for the first season and the chance to dive deeper into Rogue's layers. In her view Rogue is not as simple as she might seem when you first meet her, and has a lot of different emotional things going on. Zann called the first season a real gift and season 2 another one. She said audiences would find out even more about Rogue as time goes on, describing a story that starts as a slow burn and keeps heating up from there.

Rogue begins season 2 still grieving Remy and carrying survivor's guilt

I told Zann my sense that Rogue might still be at the beginning of her grief over Remy when season 2 opens, and asked her to correct me if I was wrong. Without spoilers, I asked how she felt about audiences following Rogue's journey with those motivations carried over from season 1.

Zann said Rogue goes through a lot. She asked people to remember what the character has been through by the start of season 2: she has witnessed a genocide and been in the middle of it, she has lost her soulmate, and she has survivor's guilt. Rogue has to overcome all of that and work out the best way forward, and what matters most to her, after trying to create a world for mutants and having it ripped away from her and from all of them.

She also teased that new characters would be introduced and would play a role in the story, while Rogue goes through a lot of stuff of her own. That is where her warning about the bumpy ride came from.

Rogue's voice is Zann's own, plus a Southern accent

I have seen Zann slip in and out of the voice in her Instagram reels, so I asked what went into crafting it back in the '90s. She answered first in character, with a "You know what, honey? Sugar," before explaining that it is really just her own voice with nothing added except a little bit of a Southern accent.

When the role came up, she had only done one animated series and a radio drama. Her agent at the time told her the producers were looking for an actress with a deep, husky, sexy voice who could do a Southern accent, and said that was her. Zann said she was cast because of that vocal quality and the fact she could do the accent.

Zann's first voice role won best actor across Canada

At 26, Zann was cast as Mary Snow in Saltwater Moon by David French, a play she called beautiful, and performed it with a Newfoundland accent, which she described as a difficult accent to do. She was nominated for and won best actor across Canada at the ACTRA Awards for that vocal performance.

At the time she was in Stockholm, Sweden, doing a play. She was flown back to Toronto and won the award on national TV, which she called amazing. That, she said, was her first voice performance straight out of the gate. A few years later she landed an animated series, and then X-Men.

Lenore Zann studied drama and political science, and kept politics and acting apart

Zann has run two careers, as a voice actress and as a politician, and I asked how the last 30 years have changed her and what that brings to Rogue in 2026. She explained that she was originally from Australia and moved to Canada when she was eight, so she had to get rid of her Australian accent without taking on a Canadian one. She grew up and went to school in Nova Scotia, and left when she was 17.

She went to university for a couple of years and majored in two things, drama and political science, which is where the politics came in. After that she played Marilyn Monroe. I mentioned that I had also majored in political science but didn't finish, and she said she didn't finish university at all either.

I asked whether she kept voice acting while working in politics. She said she wanted to make sure nobody could ask whether her acting or her constituents were more important, so she focused on looking after people and trying to find ways to make life better for working class people and "people who weren't billionaires," to make it more of an even playing field. She also worked to get the arts more recognised and to win more government investment in arts and culture, because that brings money into communities. In her words, "for every $7 that's spent, you get back 11," which made it a no-brainer for her.

A collapsed production taught Zann to let go of the outcome

The X-Men has always been an examination of the human condition, and Rogue's metaphor is that she touches everybody's lives but can't actually touch anybody. Through that lens, I asked what she would tell young actors, voice actors, musicians and other artists about not losing their feeling or getting jaded. She said artists have to make friends with uncertainty and with rejection, and recognise that when one door closes it is because another is supposed to open. That is a hard lesson early on, she said, because rejection can kill you when you get your hopes up that a project will make you. Instead you have to see what fits you and feels right.

Her example came from when she was 40. Having played Marilyn Monroe three times by then, and following the idea of writing what you know, she wrote a one woman play about Monroe and took it to New York hoping to do it off Broadway. She raised money, but she said a producer ended up stealing it, everything fell through at the last minute, and she was devastated.

She picked herself up, started earning again with guest roles on shows like Law & Order, and put that money into staging the show at Don't Tell Mama's, a small cabaret theater near Times Square. She also agreed to do another play for free for a woman who owned an off Broadway theater. That woman got to know her and came to see the Monroe show, which Zann performed on nights she wasn't doing the other play. When the owner had a three week window after something fell through or was cancelled, she asked to produce Zann's show off Broadway. Zann got there, just not the way she originally planned. Her advice is to keep your eyes on the prize and your goals clear, focus with intent, but "let go of the outcome, and let go of how you're going to get there."

As we wrapped up, I said I couldn't wait to see where Rogue goes and that we would have to do this again next season. Zann's reply looked past season 2 to season 3: "It's a slow burn, but it's worth the wait."

Does Rogue's grief over Remy and her survivor's guilt make her the emotional centre of season 2 for you, or are the new characters Zann hinted at the bigger draw?