The moment I heard about Princess Anna gracing Ohio University’s presence on our *snow day* for the second time, I knew I had to interview her…errr…him. The duct-tape-dressed Princess Anna running around campus is the passionate Frozen lover, Zak Roe, who was more than excited to share his experiences of the events with me. Of course the first question anyone would ask is, “Why do you do it?” and the plot of Frozen seamlessly flowed from his mouth, including the craziness of Princess Anna saying “Yes!” to a marriage proposal and the gloves coming off of Princess Elsa in anger of that decision. Roe, for what I could catch, knows the whole movie in and out, seeing it over an impressive combined 30 theater and DVD times and memorizing the words so well that he was able to respond to bystanders questions with the correct movie answers.
The best part of becoming Princess Anna is “seeing [people] smile,” but he’d rather them say “cheese” with him in a picture than steal a Snapchat video. He also stated that he feels like another Disney character, Hannah Montana, because he gets the best of both worlds by playing a character and then changing back into street clothes with no one recognizing him. Roe noted that in the two days after his appearance as Anna, he gained over 115 Twitter followers and thousands of mentions, retweets and engagements. Roe mentioned that the worst part of being Princess Anna was when a guy harassed him on South Green and tried to hit him with a snowball after cold slurs. Karma was in Roe’s favor when the snowball missed him and the harasser’s friends made fun of the harasser instead.
I asked if he had any other characters in the making, and he simply stated that the Frozen holiday special coming out in winter 2017 and the Broadway production being announced for 2018 will keep him in a wintery spree of Princess Anna arrivals. Roe is also working on a YouTube channel that includes his daily “Good Morning Texts” and facts of the week. Subscribe!
I couldn’t be more grateful for a humorous, carefree and passionate interviewee than Roe. If you don’t follow him already, check him out on Twitter @TheZakRoeShow and say “hi” to him on the street! Look out for more Frozen fun and any other adventures from him!