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,” the Broadway star said in an interview with Vanity Fair published on Monday.
The Tony and Emmy winner had been asked about whether homophobia had limited his opportunities in Hollywood, leading him to mention his experience with the 1996 film, which starred NBA icon Michael Jordan alongside the cast of Looney Tunes.
Nathan had apparently been in consideration for the part of Jordan’s assistant Stan Podolak, a role that eventually went to Seinfeld star Wayne Knight.
However, Nathan noted that the film was one that he “didn’t really care about”, quipping: “So thank God, I didn’t have to do Space Jam...”
“But I don’t know,” he continued. “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, the Space Jam director revealed to Entertainment Weekly in 2016, but Warner Bros. wasn’t fond of these choices.
Wayne 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.
Nathan, 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. Nathan 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.
The actor retold how, when the host asked him whether he was afraid of being “typecast” for the role, Robin then 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 the late Oscar winner.