TV Exclusive: Meet the 2013 Tony Nominees- Nathan Lane on the Gift of Playing His Role in THE NANCE

Click Here to Play the Video!

BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge was thrilled to sit down and speak with nearly all of this year's Tony Award nominees at the official Tonys Meet & Greet on May 1, 2013, and we will be bringing you special coverage on all of them throughout the awards season. Today we bring you Nathan Lane, a nominee for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for The Nance. Check out what he had to say below!

Most recently Lane playEd Hickey in the acclaimed Robert Falls production of The Iceman Cometh in Chicago. LCT: Some Americans Abroad, The Frogs. Broadway:Present Laughter (Drama Desk nom.), Merlin, The Wind in the Willows, On Borrowed Time, Guys and Dolls (Tony nom., Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards), Love! Valour! Compassion! (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards), The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Producers(Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards and the Olivier Award), The Odd Couple, Butley, November, Waiting for Godot (Outer Critics Circle nom.), The Addams Family (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle noms.). Off-Broadway: 1992 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance; The Common Pursuit; The Film Society; The Lisbon Traviata (Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards, Outer Critics Circle nom.); Lips Together, Teeth Apart; Love! Valour! Compassion! (Obie Award); Bad Habits; Dedication Or the Stuff of Dreams; Mizlansky/Zilinsky or "Schmucks"; Trumbo; Measure for Measure (St. Clair Bayfield Award); A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Merry Wives of Windsor; She Stoops to Conquer; In a Pig's Valise; Love; Do Re Mi. More than 35 films includingThe Birdcage (Golden Globe nom., Screen Actors Guild and American Comedy Awards), Ironweed, Frankie and Johnny, Mousehunt, Jeffrey, The Lion King, Stuart Little, Nicholas Nickleby (National Board of Review Ensemble Acting Award), The Producers (Golden Globe nom.), Swing Vote, Mirror Mirror, The English Teacher. Television: Most recently recurring on "The Good Wife" and "Modern Family" (six Emmy noms., two Emmy Awards and a People's Choice Award). In 2006 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2008 was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

In The Nance, playwright Douglas Carter Beane tells the story of Chauncey Miles (Nathan Lane), a headline nance performer in New York burlesque, who also happens to be homosexual. Integrating burlesque sketches into his drama, Beane paints the portrait of a homosexual man living and working in the secretive and dangerous gay world of 1930's New York whose outrageous antics on the burlesque stage stand in marked contrast to his messy offstage life.

Click here for the complete list of nominees!