Actor Nathan Lane told Vanity Fair that he was “too gay” to play a part in the smash 1996 movie Space Jam. The 69-year-old said he was in contention for the role but that changed after the film’s director, Joe Pytka, saw Lane host the Tony Awards in 1996. “Apparently the director saw me hosting the Tony Awards and thought that suggested I was too gay to play the part. So thank God, I didn’t have to do Space Jam. But I don’t know. I’ll never know what people say,” he said. When asked if the role was kept from him for discriminatory reasons, Lane said “I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, but I can’t help but think that it played a part.” The role of Stan, Michael Jordan’s publicist in Space Jam, ended up going to Seinfeld star Wayne Knight. Back in 2016, Pytka also spoke about the role in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, although he made no mention of Lane. “Originally I wanted Michael J. Fox to play that character. That studio didn’t want him. Then I wanted Chevy Chase because I had worked with Chevy on some Doritos commercials, and they didn’t want to go for that kind of stuff,” he had said at the time. That said, Lane, in his interview, concluded that “Homophobia is alive and well still.”
