Nathan Lane Chalks Up Lost Gigs Like 'Space Jam' to Homophobia

"Mid-Century Modern" star Nathan Lane has enjoyed a career that's spanned four-and-a-half decades and included movies, TV, and stage roles. Being gay hasn't slowed down the talented actor, who came out in 1999. But it's been more of an uphill battle that it might appear: Lane says, homophobia has cost him more than one movie role, including a part in the 1996 feature "Space Jam."

Speaking with Vanity Fair to promote his new Hulu sitcom "Mid-Century Modern" – a decidedly queer sitcom that co-stars Matt Bomer and Nathan Lee Graham, as well as the late Linda Lavin – Lane opened up about how the tremendous success of "The Birdcage," in which he and Robin Williams played a longtime gay couple, was less career rocket fuel than a spotlight that shone uncomfortably on questions around his sexuality.

"I thought perhaps because of the success of that, it'd lead to other films, but then it didn't," Lane said of "The Birdcage," which was released three years before he came out publicly. "It really didn't. I said to my agent, 'I thought more would happen after "The Birdcage,'" Lane went on to recount. "He said, 'Maybe if you weren't so open about your lifestyle, it would have' ....and he was an old queen telling me this."

Lane went on to say that while he doesn't "know what goes on behind closed doors," he "can't help but think that [homophobia] played a part. I was told it did impact a movie that I didn't really care about: 'Space Jam.'"

The part in question went to Wayne Knight, which Lane suggested was fine with him, even if he was passed over due to a perception that he was gay. It didn't help that he's long been seen as a theater actor.

"I wish they'd figured out what to do with me," Lane told the publication. "I've been able to, I think, shift the perception a bit about me, but there's always going to be that 'He's from the theater' thing. It's either homophobia or it's just, 'He gives big performances because he comes from the theater.'"

When it came to "Space Jam," Lane's theater background certainly seems to have been seen as a mark against him.

"Apparently the director saw me hosting the Tony Awards and thought that suggested I was too gay to play the part," Lane recounted. "So thank God, I didn't have to do 'Space Jam.'"

Added the storied actor: "Homophobia is alive and well still."

But Lane's talent has propelled him beyond such hurdles. Since he emerged from the closet in 1999 he's done numerous TV guest spots on both sitcoms and dramas (everything from "Sex and the City" and "Absolutely Fabulous" to "The Gilded Age") and starred in movies like "The Producers" and "Dicks: The Musical").

Now he's heading up his own multi-cam sitcom – a genre, Variety noted, that has been less than lucky for him in the past.

"The Mickey Rooney show doesn't count – that was his show, and I was in my early 20s," Lane said, referring to the short-lived "one of the Boys" from 1982.

"Then I did a show with the people who created 'Frasier,' which seemed like a good idea," Lane went on to say, with that show having been the 1998 sitcom "Encore! Encore!"

"But as it turned out," Lane added, "they had an idea that I didn't like, I had an idea they didn't like, and then because I wanted to please everybody, I agreed to what we eventually wound up doing – me being an opera singer who loses his voice, and goes to live with his mother and sister in Napa Valley, where they run a winery."

That show was not a success, but it bears a couple of eerily similar (if broad-strokes) resemblances to "Mid-Century Modern," in which Lane plays Bunny Schneiderman, the head of a ladies' undergarments company, who lives in Palm Springs with his mother (Lavin). His sarcastic sister, a recent divorcee, makes frequent appearances.

But "Mid-Century Modern" is intended to resemble a very different, and iconic, sitcom: "The Golden Girls," which ran for seven seasons on NBC, from 1985 - 1992. Like "The Golden Girls," "Mid-Century Modern" features three friends who are well into middle age and share a home together with one of their mothers.

"[T]his is really because of Ryan Murphy," Lane explained of his role on "Mid-Century Modern." "When he said it was the 'gay Golden Girls,' I rolled my eyes. Then he sent it to me and I read it, and it was really, really funny and smart."

The casting of Matt Bomer as Jerry, a younger man who scores easily, changed the dynamic to one in which "I was the only Golden Girl. Once they brought up Matt Bomer, I was like, 'Oh, so what am I? His fucking grandfather?'" Lane said.

Still, it's a mix that works.

"It's very moving that this is his chosen family," Lane said of his character. "In some strange way, with the tragedy of losing Linda [Lavin]" – who died midway through production of the first season, shortly after receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer – "it only reinforces how important this chosen family is.

"It's about getting older and still trying," Lane added. "I mean, they always seem to be on Grindr."

Watch a trailer for "Mid-Century Modern," which premieres March 28, below.