Twilight Zone: Late Creator Rod Serling's Voice Lives on, Thanks to This Impersonator
For decades, voice actor Mark Silverman has enjoyed the status of Rod Serling impersonator, replicating the Twilight Zone creator's unique cadence across film, television, and theme park rides.
On July 22, 1994, Disney's Hollywood Studios opened The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
Inspired by Rod Serling's classic anthology series, the attraction featured an introductory pre-show directed by Joe Dante and starring Mr. Serling . What park visitors couldn't quite work out was how the iconic Twilight Zone creator was able to record new dialogue when he had died two decades prior.
Well, the illusion was actually quite clever and seamless in its execution. Those crafty Imagineers used pre-existing footage of Rod from "It's a Good Life" and hired voice actor Mark Silverman to perform the Tower of Terror narration in Serling's unique cadence.
Rod Serling impersonator Mark Silverman on playing Twilight Zone creator
"There's no voice like his," Silverman said during a recent Zoom interview with SYFY Wire. "I've never heard anybody pronounce words like that. Why does he say ‘ro-bit’ instead of 'ro-bot'? His distinct way of phrasing things and pronouncing words isn't like anything I've ever heard anybody else do."
Growing up in 1970s Los Angeles, Silverman realized he had a knack for voices and began emulating the characters from his favorite TV shows like Get Smart, Leave it to Beaver, and, most important of all, The Twilight Zone.
"It was usually on at midnight," he recalled during the exclusive chat. "As a kid and teenager, I couldn't stop watching it every night. I'd be in school, I'd be tired, and my teachers would say, ‘What are you doing all night?’ I'd say, ‘I was watching Twilight Zone!’ I thought that was just such a normal answer."
By the time Disney sent out a casting call for its new ride, Silverman already had a leg up on all the other contenders with a pretty decent impression of the besuited, chain-smoking host welcoming viewers into that eerie dimension of sight, sound, and mind.
"I had [Marc Zicree's] The Twilight Zone Companion book, because there was no internet back then," he continued. "So I used to look up what episode was going to be on [KTLA'sl] channel 5, and I would read the monologue with Rod. The better I got at it, the closer I would get. Before watching the episode, I would practice. And then when the show came on, I was really happy to see that some of my phrasing got closer and closer to his."
"As a kid," he elaborated, "I would see a comedian do Rod Serling, and they always tightened up their face. And when I did Tower of Terror, I wanted it to sound just a little more natural."
The impression gradually became second nature, with Silverman beginning to improvise his own narration while stuck in traffic.
"I'd be at a red light and there would be a businessman walking across the street," he recounted. "I would just be going, 'Mr. Henry Diddleberg, age 34. Walking to a business meeting. He has no idea what's about to happen to him.' I couldn't stop doing that."
Out of all the applicants, Silverman got the stamp of approval from Rod's widow, Carol Serling, who had final say over casting. "To become a voice of a Disney ride, a ride based on my favorite TV show, it was like a weird fantasy," he added. "It actually was like a Twilight Zone [episode]. It was just so crazy, it didn't make sense."
In the three decades since Tower of Terror opened to the public, Silverman has become the go-to guy whenever someone in Hollywood needs a Serling stand-in. Some of his most notable gigs include Andrew Patterson's critically-acclaimed (and criminally underrated) The Vast of Night, which cheekily opens with a Twilight Zone-style framing device dubbed "Paradox Theater."
"I don't think they wanted it to completely be Rod—they wanted it to be sort-of-Rod," he said. "So, I just went over to my friend's house and read that into a microphone."
Silverman was also asked to voice Serling in two episodes of Jordan Peele's 2019 Twilight Zone reboot: "8" and "Blurryman," the latter of which contained a metafictional twist involving the series originator.
"It was great and certainly a risk to do what we did," Silverman noted. "It took a lot of nerve."
With that said, none of the attempts to resurrect the groundbreaking anthology over the years have achieved the same timeless longevity of those first five seasons.
"So much of the brilliance of that show is the time in which it took place and Rod Serling in that suit with a cigarette," Silverman explained. "In 2026, you can’t all the sudden make another Twilight Zone. It was Rod! The second you put on [the original], you get such a warm, great feeling to watch these people in these horrible situations. It's very difficult to recreate something like that."
"I cannot imagine a world without The Twilight Zone. I just can’t," he concluded. "The Twilight Zone is so special to me. There's so many episodes I just cannot stop watching over and over. And without him, there wouldn't be that. It’s amazing that all these years later, the show is still so captivating."
Classic episodes of The Twilight Zone air regularly on SYFY. Click here for complete scheduling info!
