Watch: Nathan Lane Looks Back on Robin Williams Saving Him from Outing

Nathan Lane is a highly successful film and stage star who's now openly gay... but he wasn't always. Lane recently looked back on the moment Robin Williams saved him from being outed on national TV.

Entertainment Weekly related that during a March 26 appearance on Sunday Today, Lane, 67, told the story of how he feared Oprah Winfrey was going to turn the conversation toward his real-life sexual orientation during a 1996 interview about "The Birdcage," the American adaptation of "La Cage aux Folles," in which Lane starred as the gay spouse of a character played by Robin Williams. Lane was terrified that Winfrey would end up outing him before he was ready to come out publicly on his own.

Lane had come out in childhood to his family – as "not a sportsman," anyway; "they realized a lot of things in that moment," Lane told Geist.

But back in 1996, "Lane was terrified because this was his first major film role and he just wasn't 'prepared at all' to talk about his sexuality," EW recounted.

"I just wasn't ready to do that," Lane told Today. "It's great that everyone now feels comfortable, but homophobia is alive and well and there are plenty of gay people who are still hiding."

However, Lane added, he knew that the topic was "sort of unavoidable because of the nature of the film and the character."

Indeed, Winfrey started to ask Lane about the subject, but it was Williams, a comic genius, who saved the day. Lane had voiced his fears to Williams prior to the two of them going on for their interview with Oprah.

"He said, 'Oh, it's alright, don't worry about – we don't have to talk about it,'" Lane told Today host Willie Giest, EW imparted.

It didn't take long for Lane's fears to manifest; Oprah wondered whether Lane worried about being typecast as gay (a common worry at the time for actors who played LGBTQ+ characters), and imitated audience members who might be apt to speculate.

"And then Winfrey adopts what one can only call a Nineties Gay Accent," EW narrated, "and adds, 'Is he, honey? I don't know.'"

At that moment, Lane recounted, Williams "sort of swoops in and diverts Oprah, goes off on a tangent and protects me because he was a saint."

EW explained what "off tangent" meant in that moment: "In the clip, Williams also adopts a Nineties Gay Accent, joking with Oprah, 'Girl, you changed just in the middle of that sentence.'"

The ensuing laughter provided Lane with a moment to think of something he was comfortable telling Oprah: "At the time he claimed he was a character actor without 'an image to uphold' and wasn't afraid of being typecast," EW detailed.

The entertainment outlet reminded readers of the rarity of out entertainers and the career cost of coming out back in 1996.

"A year later, Winfrey would be involved in the landmark coming-out episode of Ellen DeGeneres' sitcom, playing her character Ellen's therapist," EW reminisced. "After DeGeneres came out and Ellen was cancelled, DeGeneres worried that she would never work again."

Ellen avoided that fate, of course, and so did Lane, who is now starring in a Broadway production of "Pictures from Home."

Watch Lane's interview on Sunday Today below. (The discussion turns to "The Birdcage" at the 6:06 mark.)