Nathan Lane Throws a Political Party
Four years after getting booed off stage as the star of the NBC sitcom Encore! Encore!, Nathan Lane is finally ready for his curtain call. CBS has elected the Tony-winner to play a freshman congressman in the midseason comedy Charlie Lawrence. And this time around, Lane insists, he got it right.
For starters, while Encore! cast the openly gay Birdcage thesp as — gasp! — a skirt-chasing opera singer, Lawrence finds Lane in more familiar territory. "He's an openly gay actor who ends up getting elected to Congress," the 46-year-old performer tells TV Guide Online. "I thought this was an interesting venue, to put a gay character into the world of politics."
In addition to starring in the series, Lane also serves as an exec producer and writer. In other words, if Lawrence is a flop, he has no one to blame but himself. "The first time around, I was terribly na&#239ve," he laments of the Encore! deba
Thu, Jan 9, 2003