“Do I a-moose-you?”
That seems to be what Peter Mansbridge is saying. It’s not that he’s on the horns of a dilemma. He’s providing a voice for Disney’s “Zootopia,” opening Friday in theatres everywhere.
“It’s come to this Bill, I’m playing a moose,” Mansbridge told me with a laugh.
The 67-year-old London-native has been CBC’s main national news anchor since 1988. He has never worked with cartoon characters before, unless you count Rex Murphy.
Manasbridge’s role wasn’t exactly a stretch. He voices Peter Moosebridge, a news anchor who happens to be a moose.
The newsman did not see a final drawing of his character before recording his lines but says he had a rough idea of what the character looked like. “They told me they were kind of using my features,” he says, but he doesn’t see the resemblance. Says Mansbridge, “It has a lot more hair than I do.”
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Mansbridge says he heard from a few Sheridan Animation school grads who worked on the movie and were jazzed that a Canadian news anchor was in it.
Ginnifer Goodwin (Once Upon a Time) plays the movie’s main character, a spunky little bunny who becomes a cop and winds up working the mean streets of Zootopia. There are a few other Canadian voices in the movie, too. Read more in this article I wrote for The Canadian Press.
