“The Birdcage” could have starred Billy Crystal or Robert Redford, Nathan Lane revealed on Tuesday’s episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “Dinner’s On Me” podcast.
Lane, who played Albert Goldman in the 1996 comedy with Robin Williams as his husband, Armand Goldman, shared the story about director Mike Nichols.
“I would run into Mike, and he would say, ‘Oh, maybe Robin was not gonna do it. ‘What do you think of Billy Crystal?’” Lane recalled.
On another occasion Nichols simply dropped Redford’s name at a benefit event. “I said, ‘What about him? Is he here?,” Lane told Ferguson. “As your husband,” Nichols explained. “I said, well, if you can work that, all my dreams will be coming true — joking. You know, all very interesting ideas, but fortunately Robin agreed to do it.”
Lane fondly reminisced about the late comedian, who died in 2014. While Lane was first signed onto the project, Williams could have easily asked for him to be recast. At the time, Williams had never heard of the future Tony winner.
“He was a movie star. He could have said, ‘I want Billy Crystal,’ or another big movie name to do the film. I know they showed him the screen test and he did not know who the hell I was. And he was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ He was, as you heard, an incredibly, generous and sensitive and kind soul and we were sort of kindred spirits in a way.”
Lane added that Williams, “was just so wildly funny and brilliant and a comic genius and a wonderful actor. We always had that bond from that film.”
“The Producers” and “Monsters” star remembered how the bus stop scene from the movie made him burst into tears years later. “I did a thing for the New Yorker Festival and they showed a scene from it and I had not seen it since he had died and I just started crying.”
Lane appears next in the Hulu comedy series “Mid-Century Modern” with Matt Bomer of “Fellow Travelers.”
The post Nathan Lane Says Billy Crystal and Robert Redford Were Also Floated for ‘The Birdcage’ Before Robin Williams Got Cast appeared first on TheWrap.
