Nathan Lane has revealed that he was up for a part in “Space Jam” but ultimately didn’t get it because of his sexuality.
“Apparently the director [Joe Pytka] saw me hosting the Tony Awards and thought that suggested I was too gay to play the part,” Lane said in an interview with Vanity Fair published Monday.
The Tony- and Emmy-winning actor was asked whether homophobia limited his opportunities in Hollywood, leading him to mention his experience with the 1996 film starring NBA icon Michael Jordan.
Lane was considered for the part of Jordan’s assistant Stan Podolak, a role that eventually went to “Seinfeld” star Wayne Knight.
Lane noted that the film, however, was one that he “didn’t really care about.”
“So thank God, I didn’t have to do ‘Space Jam,’” Lane said.
He continued, “But I don’t know. I’ll never know what people say. Homophobia is alive and well, still.”
Michael J. Fox and Chevy Chase were other names considered for the same part, Pytka revealed to Entertainment Weekly in 2016, but Warner Bros. wasn’t fond of the choices. Knight’s “Seinfeld” co-star Jason Alexander was also reportedly offered the role but politely declined it as well.
“Nobody wanted to be in this movie,” Pytka told the Chicago Tribune in 2009 of the film that sees Jordan on the court with several Looney Tunes characters.
Lane, who publicly revealed he was gay in 1999, has previously detailed the challenges of being gay in Hollywood.
In a 2023 interview on “Sunday Today,” he recalled being “not prepared” to discuss his sexuality when he and Robin Williams, his co-star in the 1996 comedy “The Birdcage,” did an interview with Oprah Winfrey around the time of that movie’s release.
The two played a gay couple in the film whose son is set to marry the daughter of a conservative couple. Lane said he was “so scared” of how the interview could go down as he feared how Hollywood would react to him talking openly about his sexuality.
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The actor retold how, when Winfrey asked Lane whether he was afraid of being “typecast” for the role, Williams jumped in and diverted the talk show host “because he was a saint.”
“Robin was just the greatest person ― such a beautiful, sensitive soul and so kind and generous to me,” he said of Williams.
