Back in 1996, Robin Williams and Nathan Lane starred in the hilarious comedy movie The Birdcage, where they played a gay couple who pretend to be heterosexual when meeting the conservative family of their son’s partner.
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Nathan was around 40 years old at the time, and while he’d been enjoying a lucrative acting career on both stage and screen since the ‘80s, The Birdcage was his first major movie role — and with it came a newfound focus on his personal life.
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The actor had been out as gay in his private life since he was 21 years old, but when the film came out, he did not yet feel comfortable with addressing his sexuality on such a public scale, which he confided to his costar ahead of the movie’s press tour.
“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,” Nathan recalled during a 2023 episode of Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist. “Although it was sort of unavoidable because of the nature of the film and the character.”
In the same conversation, he praised “beautiful” Robin for how protective he was of him during this time, with one specific incident coming to mind.
In 1996, Nathan and Robin appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote The Birdcage, and Oprah put Nathan in a pretty uncomfortable situation.
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In the interview, Oprah asked the two men if they were concerned about people constantly questioning their sexuality after playing gay characters onscreen. She said: “Were you afraid of taking that role and being, like, typecast, and people forever saying: ‘Are you? Are you not? Is he? Isn’t he? Honey, I don’t know!’”
“Uhm,” Nathan awkwardly began before Robin seamlessly interjected to protect Nathan’s privacy.
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“Girl, you changed just in the middle of that sentence,” he joked, going on to leave both Oprah and the live studio audience in hysterics with his impersonation of the host.
“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,'” Nathan explained on Sunday Sitdown. “And [Robin] said: ‘Oh, it’s alright, don’t worry about it, we don’t have to talk about it, we won’t talk about it.'”
He then recalled how Robin “sort of swoops in and diverts Oprah and goes off on a tangent and protects [him] 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,” Nathan added of publicly coming out. “‘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.”
And clips from both the Oprah interview and Nathan’s podcast appearance recently resurfaced in a TikTok video, where Robin, who died by suicide in 2014 at age 63, has received widespread praise for how he looked out for his costar.
“The empathy Robin Williams expressed. may we all be so kind,” one person commented on the clip. Another wrote: “We did not deserve Robin Williams but damn I’m glad we got him, even if it wasn’t for long enough.”
“Robin keeps looking at him like I got you 💖” one more observed, as somebody else echoed: “I love how his face got so serious every time he looked at Nathan Lane like don’t worry I got you.”
“she wanted to use him for her ratings thank god robin was there,” another user claimed, with many others expressing their disappointment in Oprah in the video.
Summing up the discourse, one person wrote: “Oprah knew exactly what she was doing. Robin was always a treasure.”
Nathan came out as gay in an interview with the Advocate in 1999, three years after the Oprah incident. He referenced this moment in the interview, saying: “Robin saw my face, and he jumped in and protected me.”
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You can watch the TikTok below, be sure to let me know your thoughts on the whole thing in the comments!
ABC / Sunday Sitdown / Via tiktok.com
If you or someone you know has experienced anti-LGBTQ violence or harassment, you can contact the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs hotline at 1-212-714-1141.
Dial 988 in the United States to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365. Your conversations are free and confidential. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.
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