FILM · 1996 · USA
The Birdcage
33 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
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Robin Williams was initially cast as Albert but wanted a change from flamboyant characters. He also felt that playing a character in a dress would make the film a repeat of his earlier movie Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). So, after Steve Martin, who was initially cast as Armand, dropped out, Williams asked to take on the role of Armand. Mike Nichols agreed and recast him. Martin later regretted the choice, since he had never made a film with Williams.
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Robin Williams's slip and fall during the shrimp scene (at about 1 hour 35 minutes) was not planned. Williams really fell, and he, Hank Azaria and Dan Futterman are suppressing their laughter. Williams can even be heard suppressing his laughter as he tells everyone to get out of the kitchen on "Go."
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Months before filming on The Birdcage began, filmmaker and PBS producer Rick McKay was hired by director Mike Nichols to travel to Paris, London, San Francisco and Atlanta to make a feature-length documentary about drag queens. McKay did extensive research to find drag queens around the world to interview and film performing. This completed documentary was used to train Nathan Lane and Robin Williams.
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Hank Azaria's close friend Billy Bob Thornton was working on the production of his film Sling Blade while The Birdcage was being shot. Since both characters had distinctive voices and behaviors, the two friends worked on their characters' voices by acting as if Agador and Karl Childers were in a police film together.
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Nathan Lane was not out publicly while making or promoting the film. He noted he was especially nervous during his interview with Oprah Winfrey, saying Robin Williams had his back and told him that if he did not want to come out, Robin would do everything he could to prevent it, and that he stayed true to that.
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Steve Martin later said he regretted turning down the chance to play Armand in this film, because he had become very close friends with Robin Williams and, although the pair performed on stage together during their careers, they never appeared in a film together before Williams died by suicide in 2014. Originally Martin was to play Armand opposite Williams as Albert, but Martin was busy with Sgt. Bilko (1996), which was released a few weeks after this film.
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According to Hank Azaria, Robin Williams loved performing in front of anyone, whether it was Azaria or an audience. During filming at Paramount Studios, Azaria said most of the cast avoided the trams of visitors touring the lot, but Williams could not resist and would put on a show for the tourists.
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The two-minute opening sequence looks like one uninterrupted Steadicam shot, but it was actually made up of three separate shots seamlessly joined with dissolves, mattes and morphing: the first shot began with a helicopter over the Atlantic and ended on the street in Miami's South Beach area where the club is located; the second shot began on a crane (simulating a helicopter) that was slowly lowered to ground level before the Steadicam operator stepped off, then crossed the street and went in through the club's front door; the third shot was done on a studio sound stage, where the Steadicam operator started just outside the club's exterior facade and then moved inside to complete the shot. According to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the hardest part of the process was matching the crane's speed to the helicopter's speed.
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Robin Williams was also highly influential in getting Nathan Lane to play Albert, because Lane had auditioned three years earlier for Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) to play the gay brother of Williams's character's brother. Williams and that film's director, Chris Columbus, nearly cast Lane, but the actor was so insistent on playing Frank that he was ultimately chosen instead. Williams promised Lane they would work together on a future film since he had missed out on Doubtfire, and asked him to do this film with him. Lane was very devoted to Broadway and nearly turned it down, but Williams and director Mike Nichols eventually persuaded him to sign on.
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When Mike Nichols approached Robin Williams to appear in the film, Williams was experiencing some burnout after shooting Nine Months (1995) and Jumanji (1995), and he had also signed on to make the later Jack (1996) for his close friend Francis Ford Coppola. Williams was also initially uninterested in remaking the French play and film La Cage Aux Folles (1978), which this film was a remake of. He felt that enough Americans were familiar with the original film's story because it had done respectable business in America. However, he was surprised that many of his colleagues in the industry had never seen the original film, and after agreeing to meet with Mike Nichols, the two agreed that the story could be adapted for an American audience, so Williams ultimately signed the deal even though he had shot the two aforementioned films a year earlier and would appear in three more films in 1996. Accepting this film meant he was one of the busiest actors of the time.
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