X-Men: ’97 Star Lenore Zann Talks The Series’ Long-Awaited Return, Season 2 And More

Critics and audiences agree that X-Men ’97 is one of the best Marvel shows to date, if not one of the studio’s best productions to date. In the world of entertainment, however, there’s no better form of validation than an accolade. With the first round of Emmy voting just about to end, many of the creatives who worked on the series have been campaigning for a chance to be nominated for one of TV’s highest honors.

One of those creatives is Lenore Zann, who is probably more recognizable for lending her voice to the definitive performance of Rogue on the show.

Recently, our very own Editor-In-Chief Dempsey Pillot got a chance to catch up with Zann. Not only did she plead her case for why the show deserves recognition from the Television Academy. She shared the unbelievable story of how she and the crew manifested their return to the series and teased what fans can expect from future seasons too!

After the series ended in September of 1997, the cast was definitely heartbroken, but not even they could guess that they would be given the chance to return 20+ years later. In the interview Zann revealed that it actually wasn’t even something they believed could happen until they went to their first comic book convention just about five years ago.

“We all went, and we hadn’t seen each other in 25 years,” she said. “It was a love fest. It was fantastic. We even met the writers – the original writers – and director Larry Houston. And at the end of that experience, we went for dinner.”

At the dinner, she revealed that they all came together and said, “‘Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody was to buy the rights to the X Men: The Animated Series, and reboot [it], and bring us all back again? …Let’s put that out to the universe.’ And we did.”

She grinned ear to ear when saying the next part. “And here we are. We’re all a little bit shaking our heads and going, you know, the Universe works in mysterious ways, but it must have been listening that day.”

And she really does believe someone was listening to them that day because it’s not just the fact that the show was picked up. It’s the fact that it was picked up AND that nearly everyone from the original got to come back.

While it has been wonderful to return to the role, Zann explains that it was admittedly difficult to get back into the groove with her castmates because they started working on the first season towards the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the way in which the show doesn’t miss a beat from the last season, you wouldn’t be able to tell.

In this newest season, Zann is most proud of Rogue’s growth. With the way the roster has changed – and continues to change – she joked “Maybe she’ll become a leader someday. I mean, in the comics, she does, right. I think they all take a turn at some point in the comics.”

While she couldn’t say too much about Rogue’s future (or past, depending on if you’re all caught up on the show), she did say she believes the team has “got a number of seasons to go.” She gave a specific shout out to series writer Beau DeMayo for his job at flushing Rogue out in the season’s fifth episode. She expressed her gratitude for “getting a chance to really show what Rogue can do – and her depths of emotion.”

On the show’s technical side, Zann says that she’s particularly proud of how much more expressive the animated characters look. “They’re able to make our faces look more [real], and have more emotions on them than back in the 90s,” she says, explaining that it makes a much bigger difference with the stories they are trying to tell now versus nearly three decades ago.

Above everything, Zann mentioned that the one thing she really believes about the show this time around is how much more relevant it is today. “X-Men has [always] meant so much to so many people around the world,” she said. “Back in the ‘90s, when kids were being bullied or being abused at home or felt different, LGBTQ members who just were afraid to come out…Ourshow made them feel safe, that it was a safe space, that they belonged and that everybody belongs to our X-Men community. That’s the message we’re continuing today. And sadly, I think the world needs it almost more now than we did in the ‘90s.”

Curious to find out what else Lenore Zann said about X-Men ‘97, or if Rogue will help Captain America find his shield in the next season? You can check out the full interview below!