BROADWAY STARS: Nathan Lane on Returning to Broadway in ‘Pictures from Home’ and Decades of Iconic Roles (March 2023)

Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist

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🗓️ 28 September 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

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Summary

Nathan Lane is a three-time Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor beloved for his roles on stage and screen, from "The Producers" and "The Birdcage" to voicing Timon in Disney’s "The Lion King." In this conversation from March 2023, Lane opens up to Willie Geist about his return to Broadway in "Pictures from Home," his journey from theater to Hollywood, and the performances that have defined his decades-long career.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Got a really fun one for you today with Emmy and Tony winner, Nathan Lane. I don't really need to give you a big
0:23.1	introduction on Nathan Lane. You know him, you love him. He's won three Tony Awards for his work on
0:28.3	Broadway. He's done the Birdcage and a whole bunch of other movies. He's done animated. He was
0:34.4	the Lion King, Kahuna Matata. You know the story there. Of course, he's been on
0:38.7	Modern Family. He's been on Mad About You. He's been on Only Murders in the Building, for which
0:44.9	he recently won his first Emmy Award. The guy's done it all over the course of about 40 years.
0:50.4	Grew up in New Jersey, interestingly enough, as Joe Lane, Joseph Lane, was his name at birth, had a very difficult childhood, what you'll hear about with his mother and father, but he had two great older brothers who helped him along and encouraged him into theater.
1:06.1	When he decided to become an actor, there was another Joe Lane, another Joseph Lane. So he made his stage name,
1:12.8	Nathan Lane, after the character Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, a part he later played on
1:18.5	Broadway in a wonderful twist of fate. So he's just fun to talk to. He's a guy who's done it all
1:24.2	and seen it all. He's in a new play called Pictures from Home, which is playing
1:28.3	in New York at Studio 54. He told me before our interview that he went once back in the day to
1:36.8	Studio 54. He was at Eddie Murphy's 21st birthday party, said he knocked over someone's bottle of
1:43.0	champagne, had to pay for it, and then
1:45.3	was asked to leave. So that is the extent of his experience at the debauchous original Studio
1:50.8	54. It's now a theater space where he's performing the new play, pictures from home,
1:56.2	which he will tell you all about. We got together in a little music space beneath Studio 54 for our conversation.
2:02.7	I think you'll enjoy it with one of the greats, really. One of my favorites, Nathan Lane, right now
2:07.6	on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thank you for doing this, Nathan. It's my great pleasure, really.
2:13.5	Nice to see you. Great to see you. I feel like we've just done an entire deep dive interview.
2:18.4	But we'll pick it up officially here.
2:20.8	Yes, yes, yes, yes.
	...

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