Hey everyone, this is The Last Laugh.

I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and I have a little something special to share with you ahead of our 100th episode next week.

Our big guest on that show will be Nathan Lane, who joins the podcast to talk about his breakthrough performance in the Birdcage,

nearly 25 years to the day after that iconic film was released.

During our talk, I asked Nathan to weigh in on recent controversies around straight actors

playing gay roles. His answer led us to some unexpected news about a possible birdcage sequel.

Here's what he had to say.

No, I don't think gay roles have to be played by gay actors.

Do I think maybe something special might come from it?

Perhaps I just saw Supernova with Stanley Tucci, a friend, and Colin Firth. And they give beautiful performances. So

here's an example. Here's something. And it ties in with podcasts and gay actors and this whole

subject. Now, a year ago, I knew nothing about podcasts. And then, you know, I did Mark Maron.

You know, he's like the mothership of podcasts.

Absolutely.

And then suddenly, I love podcasts came into my life.

So the pandemic, suddenly we have a lot of time on our hands.

I'm listening to podcasts.

And there's a podcast called Beyond the Box Set, run by these two young British fellas, in which they propose sequels to movies that they

love that didn't do peoples. And one of them was, the title of the podcast was that Birdcage 2,

Starina rides again. So I got nothing to do. I listen to it. And one guy, one guy pitches and then,

and then the other, the other guy gives a pitch.

The first pitch was not good. Then the second guy, his name is John Lucas, he starts to pitch

...