VOICES | Interview with Lee Marshall.

In 2005, Dose had me profile several voice actors for a series called “behind the voices”. Most of my work went to waste because the profiles were cut down more than 90%.  For the purposes of this web series, I am including the longer interview content in full.

Who’s behind the voices?

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! No, wait, do. Much like the Great and Powerful OZ, the voiceover people at some of Canada’s biggest networks play a major role in how those stations are perceived, and I’m here to give you the skinny on who they are, what they do, and what they look like. They’re the people you’ve probably heard, even if you’ve never heard of them. And you get to see them here first. Now: Lee Marshall, 53, currently of CTV.

Jen Selk for Dose: Tell me about your professional history.

Lee Marshall, voice-over personality.

Lee Marshall: I spent 30 some odd years in radio. I used to do TV voice-over work for Sandra Fair and Associates. Her husband is the head honcho at CTV, and eight years ago, he just asked me if I’d come over. It’s the best job I’ve ever had. Short hours, they treat me great!

So what’s an average day like for you?

I come in at 9:30 am, laugh and joke, and laugh some more, read a couple of things, laugh and joke, go get something to eat, come back, read a couple of things. It’s great. Sometimes it gets busy, but by and large it’s a nice, steady flow, but not intense at all. It’s a breeze. No one gets in my face at all.

CTV is pleasant. It’s a good working environment. We have a good time.

What lines are you known for right now?

The one that runs the most is “Canada’s watching – then the name of show – on CTV.” And of course, I’m known for introducing Lloyd Robertson night after night.

Do you miss radio?

At this point, I like working in TV better than radio because radio stopped being fun. Here, I don’t have to worry about that. I really enjoy doing W5, and I watched that since it came on the air. To be a part of that is kind of a thrill.

Are you done with radio, then? Is that the past for you?

Not exactly. I got into radio in 1972, and stopped doing that in 1999, but I do things here and there. I don’t get bored. At no point in time have I ever been bored.

What happened is they started to tell me what to say and what to play, and stopped letting me be creative. I didn’t like it. Radio started going through that change about a dozen years ago. And I thought, if I wasn’t going to do a radio show for the audience, I wasn’t going to do one at all.

It’s not what it was. This JackFM thing. You know how they say they’re “playing what we want” – what a bunch of bull that is. They’re not playing what they want!

Is voice-work something you think of as easy to get into? Maybe because of when you started (before the market was saturated)?

No, it’s not easy to get into. Absolutely not. I was lucky. Particularly, when I was the voice of Blockbuster, and I had to have a different voice for each set of commercials.

When you do TV, you have to have all kinds of different approaches. It’s not something that everybody can do, and not just because of our voices.

I got into radio because I loved music and I always enjoyed playing music for people. When I was a kid, I can recall taking a day off school – a sick day, supposedly – and there were some guys laying broadloom and I played them tunes all day.

Any anecdotes? Crazy stories?

The craziest lately were maybe some promos that we did for The Osbournes that were a little risqué, but I won’t enumerate any further on that.

Do you think you’ve been successful because you’re a unique personality?

I don’t know about that. Right now, my favourite kinds of music are fairly strange and diverse. On one hand I really love Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and on the other hand, I probably have Canada’s biggest library of Reggae music. I am also a co-owner of a bar up in Muskoka.

People would just always say things to me like, ‘you should get a job in radio.’ When I already was. When I’d been been doing it for years. It all just made sense.

I have hair halfway down my back and a ZZ Top beard right now. When I was hired at CTV, the definition of my job was that I be the corporate voice of the network. One of the great things about radio and doing voice-overs is that nobody knows what I look like. It gives me more privacy.

A version of this piece appeared in Dose on August 4, 2005. See clipping below. More from this series:

Behind the voices: Tony Daniels.

Behind the voices: Carl Armstrong.

Behind the voices: Tamara Plener.

Behind the voices: Don Berns.

Published in Dose, August 4, 2005.