Nathan Lane, Getting Serious, Plays Roy Cohn

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2018

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nathan Lane may be best known for supplying the voice of the fun-loving meerkat in “The Lion King,” but in recent years he’s turned his focus to more serious roles. Now he’s playing the villain, Roy Cohn, in a new production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” Lane sat down with Michael Schulman at The New Yorker Festival in October, 2017, to talk about the real-life Cohn. A conservative attorney who denied that he was gay to the end of his life, Cohn served as Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel during the crusade against Communism, as an adviser to Richard Nixon, and as a mentor to the young Donald Trump. Lane went to great lengths to understand the contradictions of Cohn’s life. “It’s easy to find people who hated him,” Lane tells Schulman. “But there were people who loved Roy Cohn.” “Angels in America” opens on Broadway in February.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:08.4	I'm David Remnick.
0:09.2	Acuna Matata.
0:11.7	What a wonderful phrase.
0:15.2	Acuna Matata.
0:17.5	Ain't no peasant craze.
0:26.5	It means no worries for the rest of your days Nathan Lane has done many roles in a long career as an actor
0:30.5	but the one you likely know best
0:32.4	is an easy-going meerkat in the Lion King
0:35.7	and that's how Lane made his name, playing funny men or
0:38.8	funny meerkats on stage, on film, and on television. In recent years, though, Lane is getting
0:44.2	down to more serious and dramatic parts. And now he's playing a villain, Roy Cohn, in Tony Cushner's
0:51.0	play, Angels in America. Cushner's play is a work of fiction, but Roy Cohen was a lawyer and a master of the dark arts of politics.
1:00.6	And there might be other lawyers who have a guilty conscience or feel they have to crawl, but I don't have a guilty conscience, and I'm not going to crawl before this committee or any committee like it.
1:11.0	Cohen was the chief counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy during the hunt for communists in the 1950s,
1:15.9	and he helped prosecute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for spying.
1:21.1	Cohen was close to Richard Nixon and later a mentor to the young Donald Trump,
1:25.4	and he repeatedly denied that he was gay, although it was well known, and he died of AIDS in
1:30.9	1986.
1:32.4	Nathan Lane plays Roy Cohn in the revival of Angels in America that ran in London last year
1:37.7	and comes to Broadway in February.
1:40.2	Lane recently talked with the New Yorkers Michael Schulman about that role and a lot more.
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