Nathan Lane: Robin Williams Protected Me from Being Outed During ‘Oprah’ Interview

Nathan Lane is remembering Robin Williams as an ally.

The “Only Murders in the Building” actor recalled starring alongside Williams in 1996 comedy “The Birdcage.” Despite playing a queer couple, Lane noted he was “not prepared at all” to publicly come out as gay at the time. Co-star Williams helped Lane avoid questions of his sexuality during the press tour, particularly for an “Oprah” interview.

“I just wanted to talk about [how] I finally got a big part in a movie and I didn’t want to make it about my sexuality,” Lane said during the “Today” show. “Although it was sort of unavoidable because of the nature of the film and the character.”

Lane asked Williams before the “Oprah” interview to share his anxiety that host Oprah Winfrey would ask about his sexuality.

“I don’t think Oprah was trying to out me, but I said to Robin beforehand, ‘I’m not prepared. I’m so scared of going out there and talking to Oprah. I’m not prepared to discuss that I’m gay on national television, I’m not ready,'” Lane said. “And he said, ‘Oh, it’s alright, don’t worry about it, we don’t have to talk about it, we won’t talk about it.'”

Lane added that he “certainly wasn’t ready to go from table to table to tell them all that I was gay” while promoting “The Birdcage,” for which he landed a Golden Globe nomination.

During the 1996 “Oprah” interview, Winfrey asked Lane whether he was “afraid of taking that role and being like typecast and people forever saying, ‘Are you? Are you not?'” and then seemingly asking if he was queer. Williams deflected the attention but jokingly imitated Winfrey’s question. Lane later responded that he was a character actor without “an image to uphold” and therefore was not worried about being typecast.

Lane looked back on the moment, crediting Williams for how he “sort of swoops in and diverts Oprah and goes off on a tangent and protects me, because he was a saint.”

“I just wasn’t ready to do that, to make this whole thing… the public side of it, the celebrity side,” Lane, who later came out in 1999, said. “‘Oh, now you’re a public figure and you have to make some sort of public statement about it.’ I was terrified. I wasn’t ready to do that.”

Lane added, “It’s great that everyone now feels comfortable, but homophobia is alive and well and there are plenty of gay people who are still hiding.”

Williams’ “Bicentennial Man” co-star Sam Neill recently looked back on the late comedian in his memoir “Did I Ever Tell You This?” writing that Williams seemed to be the “loneliest man on a lonely planet” and also the “saddest person” he’s ever known. Neill further noted that Williams was simultaneously the most “irresistibly, outrageously, irrepressibly, gigantically funny” co-star he’s worked with.