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  • 8 months ago
In this video from EW's "Awardist" Comedy Actors Roundtable, Nathan Lane shares an unforgettable story from a Terrence McNally play where he cleverly adapted a nude scene. The "Mid-Century Modern" actor describes how this creative choice, which involved flashing his bare butt, resulted in arguably the longest laugh he's ever gotten on stage.

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00:00I did a play, a Terrence McNally play called Love, Valor, Compassion, and he had written
00:04that this character I was playing entered naked serving drinks.
00:10And it's a group of gay men at a country house.
00:15And I said, I'm not doing that.
00:17He said, there's nothing funny about that at all.
00:20It would just be upsetting for the audience, for me in particular.
00:25So I said, I don't want to do that.
00:26I said, the character is a costume designer, so he could improvise a costume to wear coming
00:34out serving drinks.
00:35So I said, what if I'm in an apron and a big picture hat and sunglasses and sweat socks
00:40and high heels, but I'm not wearing anything underneath the apron?
00:46So I made this entrance and it might have been the longest laugh I've ever gotten on stage,
00:51which was they saw me come on and there was a laugh when they saw the outfit.
00:56And then as I went by and I saw my ass, the laugh went on for a very long time.
01:03And then Steven Spinella, the great Steven Spinella was in the scene and he kept trying
01:08to cut the laugh off.
01:09So I would bend over and stick my ass in his face and the laugh went right back.
01:15Sounds gratifying.
01:16You figured out what works for you and also what worked for the character that made sense.
01:25You know, it's like, oh, then that's fun.
01:27He's doing this thing for fun because he's that kind of guy.
01:31That's how you steal the scene.
01:32Yeah.
01:33It is.
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