Nathan Lane praised the late actor Robin Williams for “dabbling in” and saving him during a 1996 Oprah interview when he wasn’t ready to come out publicly as gay.
Lane, 67, came out publicly three years later, in 1999, but during the press tour for his film The Birdcage, in which he starred opposite Williams, he simply “wasn’t ready” to tell the world.
‘I just wanted to talk about [how] I finally got a major role in a movie and I didn’t want it to be about my sexuality,” she said. NBC sunday today in a teaser clip. “Although it was kind of unavoidable because of the nature of the movie and the character.”
Lane played a drag queen named Albert in the film, which centered on him and Williams’ character, Armand Goldman, pretending to be a straight couple in order to meet the conservative parents of his son’s fiancée.
‘I don’t think so [Oprah] he was trying to get me out of the closet,” Lane said. “But I told Robin beforehand, ‘You know, I’m just not ready. I’m so scared to go out and talk to Oprah. I’m not ready to talk about being gay on national television.” I am not ready”.
And he said, “Okay, don’t worry about it. We don’t have to talk about it, we won’t talk about it.”
Lane called Williams, who died in August 2014, a “saint.”
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Lane, 67, came out publicly as gay in 1999, but during a press tour for his film The Birdcage, in which he starred opposite Williams, who died in August 2014, he simply “wasn’t ready” to tell the world.
‘I don’t think so [Oprah] he was trying to get over me,’ said Lane (pictured with Williams in 1996). “But I told Robin beforehand, ‘You know, I’m just not ready. I’m so scared to go out and talk to Oprah. I’m not ready to talk about being gay on national television.”
‘[Oprah says:] Are you worried about being pigeonholed? And then Robin pounces and sidetracks Oprah,’ recalled The Only Murders in the Building star.
During the 1996 interview, Oprah asked a nervous-looking Lane, ‘Were you afraid to take that role and be like the all-around kind of guy? are you, aren’t you? Is it, honey? I don’t know.’
Before Lane had a chance to respond, Williams pounced and said, ‘Um, girl, you changed right in the middle of that sentence. I don’t know, I’m telling you. Don’t make me go out there’ her as she imitated flamboyant body language as she shot a quick glance at Lane.
Williams fanned his hand in front of his face as he and Oprah laughed, buying Lane time to think of a response.
The Modern Family actor would go on to say that he didn’t “have an image to maintain” and that “from role to role, I’m usually quite different.”
During the 1996 interview, Oprah asked a nervous-looking Lane, ‘Were you afraid to take that role and be like the all-around kind of guy? are you, aren’t you? Is it, honey? I don’t know’
Before Lane had a chance to respond, Williams pounced and said, ‘Um, girl, you changed right in the middle of that sentence…’
“I just wasn’t ready,” Lane said in the interview with NBC Sunday Today, which airs at 8 a.m. this weekend. ‘To do all this… the public side, the celebrity side. Oh, now you are a public figure and you have to make some kind of public statement about it. I was terrified. I wasn’t prepared to do that.
Despite not being ready to come forward at the time, he is grateful to see today’s youth being given the opportunity to feel ‘comfortable’ with their sexualities, but said that ‘homophobia is alive and well and there are many gay people who still they hide .’
Lane came out publicly in an interview with The Advocate in 1999, where he referenced the Oprah interview, saying that Williams “protected” him.
The actor would later marry his husband Devlin Elliott in November 2015.
The Birdcage won Best Performance by a Cast at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1997.
Lane played a drag queen named Albert in the film, which centered on him and Williams’ character, Armand Goldman, pretending to be a straight couple in order to meet the conservative parents of their son’s fiancée.
The Birdcage won Outstanding Performance by a Cast at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1997.