Nathan Lane shares mum’s response to him coming out: ‘Rather you were dead’

Nathan Lane has opened up about the moment he came out to his mother.

Speaking on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday, the Only Murders in the Building actor recalled sitting his mother down and telling her the truth about his relationship.

“I didn’t want to tell her, but before I left, we had been through so much together and, you know, I had never lied to her,” Lane said. “And so I sat her down and said, ‘Look, I know you think I’ve been seeing a girl, but actually, I’ve been seeing a guy.'”

READ MORE: Nathan Lane claims he lost out on a role in Space Jam because the director thought he was ‘too gay’

His mother’s response was not what he had hoped.

“She said, ‘You mean you’re a homosexual?'” Lane recounted. “And I had never heard it put that way. And I said, ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ And she didn’t say it in a vindictive or angry way. She said it with a sort of sadness, ‘I would rather you were dead.'”

The 70-year-old told host Howard Stern that he had approached the conversation with hope. “I felt like I needed to do that. I needed to be honest with her, right? Because, I guess, I felt on some level she might understand, but she didn’t.”

He described his mother’s reaction: “You have to understand this is another generation, and that was, you know, this was not a sophisticated person in that way.”

Lane asked his mother not to tell his brothers, Bob and Dan, but she called them immediately.

His brother Dan, a teacher, was largely supportive, though he did ask whether it might “just be a phase”.

His other brother’s reaction was simpler. “He was like, ‘I love you no matter what,'” Lane said. “He didn’t seem to care.”

Lane came out publicly in a 1999 interview with The Advocate, three years after his celebrated turn as a gay man in the 1996 comedy The Birdcage, alongside Robin Williams and Gene Hackman.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.