Nathan Lane recalls how Robin Williams fought for him to be cast on The Birdcage: “He didn’t know who the hell I was.”
It’s been over a decade since the tragic death of Robin Williams, but he continues to be remembered by those who loved him, including Nathan Lane. The pair starred together in The Birdcage, and Lane credits Williams for helping him get cast in the movie, although he was largely unknown at the time.
In The Birdcage, Lane and Williams played a gay couple whose son is set to marry the daughter of a conservative senator, and they reluctantly agree to masquerade as straight to avoid a scandal. While speaking on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast Dinner’s On Me, Lane said that director Mike Nichols was considering bigger names for Lane’s role, including Billy Crystal or Robert Redford, but Williams fought for him.
“He was a movie star. You know, he could have said, ‘I want Billy Crystal,’ or another big movie name to do the film,” Lane said. “I know they showed him [my] screen test, and he didn’t know who the hell I was. And he was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ He was just, as you heard, incredibly generous and sensitive and kind.“
Lane continued, “We were sort of kindred spirits in a way. He was just so wildly funny and brilliant and a wonderful actor and, and you know, we always had that bond from that film. I did a thing for the New Yorker Festival and they showed a scene from it, and I hadn’t seen it in a while . . . since he had died, and I just started crying. You know that scene at the bus stop, where he gives the palimony. It’s my favorite scene in the film.“
There are countless tales of Williams going to bat for people or just cheering them up during tough times. He arranged for Sally Field to leave the set of Mrs. Doubtfire after a family tragedy; he reached out to Conan O’Brien after that whole Tonight Show debacle; and he was the first person who made Christopher Reeve laugh after his horse accident, which left him paralyzed. Truly a very special man who was taken from the world far too soon.
