A Cineplex celebrity you can’t escape noticing.

TTanner Zee anner Zee is taking dinner at a nondescript restaurant when he overhears a quarrel between two young ladies seated at a table not far away. “That’s him, that’s totally him,” one of them insists to her companion. “That’s the guy!” Her companion isn’t so sure. “Like, no way,” she rejoins. “He’d be in Hollywood.”

Tanner plays it cool and pretends not to hear them: privately blushing, he finishes his meal and stifles a smile. But as he makes to leave he can’t resist the indulgence. He waves to the girls by way of answering the question they were undoubtedly too nervous to ask. This striking lad with the Ken-doll hairdo and winsome news-anchor grin? He is indeed Tanner Zee.

This sort of thing happens to Tanner all the time, understandably. He is the de facto face of the monolithic Cineplex theatre chain, gracing screens the country over as the host of the cinema’s commercial pre-show program — that benign 20-minute sizzle reel of trivial entertainment news and unctuous pressjunket interviews. He’s the fellow in a smart button down who enthusiastically proclaims that Johnny Depp is back in this summer’s Pirates of the Caribbean 6 or asks Chris Hemsworth what it was like to work with Scarlett Johansson. He’s the friendly emcee who suggests you download the such-and-such app and introduces a promotional segment or special feature. If you’ve seen a movie in Canada some time over the last several years, you’ve seen Tanner Zee.

It’s rather an odd sort of fame. Tanner enjoys what you might call an inconspicuous ubiquity. is host of the Cineplex movie theatre chain’s pre-show program. He appears at length before virtually every mainstream movie screened in this country but is never the attraction or the star. He’s unnoticeable and inescapable at the same time. “Not everyone will see a particular movie with a particular actor,” Tanner points out, you’d have to say, correctly. “But everyone in Canada goes to the movies, and when they do they see me.” In this sense he’s a more pervasive screen presence than anyone — even if his presence is not what audiences have paid to see. “Some people may not pay attention to it,” he concedes. “But everybody has seen it. It’s always there.”

His ascent to celebrity began in high school, where he hosted a radio show in his native Saskatoon. There he distinguished himself by his initiative: he sought out guests to interview and learned the art of chatting with the famous on the air. “I had a love for conversation,” he remembers. “It was cool to just talk to people and get their perspective on life. I was always drawn to that.” And the range of perspectives he procured is fascinating. “I got Hal Johnson from Body Break on the show. I interviewed some of the Power Rangers. I had Mel B of the Spice Girls. I had Bill Cosby,” he says. “In fact I was one of the last people to interview Cosby before his – well, you know what happened there. I just loved talking to people and getting these stories that were so interesting.”

But soon Tanner had exhaust- ed radio’s appeal. “I was at a crossroads,” he explains. “I felt kind of limited by the format. It’s only on one plane — it’s just sound, there’s no visual there. So once you get good at sounding good then you feel like you’re maybe hitting the ceiling a bit.” So when he heard that Cineplex was set to run a contest to find its next video pre-show host, he believed he’d found the career change he’d been looking for. Tanner submitted an audition tape and won the popular vote handily. He bested more than 300 fellow contestants, and toward the end of the summer of 2015, Tanner Zipchen was named the official Cineplex pre-show host and duly rechristened Tanner Zee.

Tanner has since relocated from Saskatchewan to Toronto, where press junkets are regularly conducted and more behindthe-scenes segments tend to be produced. Travel remains part of the gig, though. It’s standard operating procedure for broadcast press like Tanner to be flown around and feted extravagantly, in the constant bid to please infotainment reporters and drum up positive press. “I fly around to do the interviews wherever the people are,” he says. “New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam. I went to Maui for the Angry Birds Movie — Sony had everybody come out to this luxury resort for a few days. We did a zipline, to feel like you’re flying like a bird. Yoga on the beach, like anger management for the angry birds. Then we did interviews on the roof of the hotel, which was quite stun- ning. A ning.”

These kinds of opportunities, Tanner explains, continue to materialize. “I’m getting invited to movie sets, junkets, red carpets. The overall piece that comes out of it, there’s an obligation to do a good job and keep the studios happy, because if it works out then we’ll be invited to the next set visit and the next one after that.” If the studios are pleased with the professional poise and polish of the pre-show, in other words, Tanner will get to see the beaches of Maui once again. “That’s how you build relationships and open doors.” And increasingly Tanner’s been afforded creative latitude in this area. “More recently, as I’ve done more and more and more of this, I’m allowed to go in there with my own questions,” he says. “Whatever comes to my mind. And so far, no problems.”

For Tanner this is all still very hard to believe — the “small town Saskatchewan boy on the big screen,” as he describes it. And gradually, one overheard restaurant argument at a time, he’s getting accustomed to the fame. “You get recognized on the street, that’s always strange,” he says. “But it’s just part of normal everyday life for me now. People I’ve never met will use my first name. You’re going through security at the airport and they ask you what you’re shooting today. It’s like, what? It’s very surreal. But it doesn’t really hit me anymore.” It’s a good thing, too. Because as Tanner envisions it, his ambitions for the future won’t let up. He predicts more red carpets, more set visits, more content — even new forms. “Maybe it becomes like a regular entertainment show,” he says. “Who knows? It’s hard to tell what will happen.” little windy, but stun-