Sitting tucked away in the kitchen corner dressed in a white butler suit too big for his body, Hank Azaria watched the late, great Robin Williams wipe out.
The entirely unscripted fall was a signature moment in “The Birdcage,” the beloved 1996 story of a conservative political scandal that interrupts the lives of a Miami drag club owner and his effeminate partner, and it took all of Azaria’s willpower to keep from bursting out laughing at the shrimp-filled spill.
‘THE BIRDCAGE AT 20’: 20 UNKNOWN FACTS ABOUT THE FILM
“You’ll see I’m kind of laughing, and I have to pretend I’m crying,” Azaria — who played Agador Spartacus, the endearing family maid — told the Daily News. “That was completely a mistake, and it ended up in the movie.”
Williams bounced back up in a split second and was rolling with the punches, riffing off Azaria’s tears to deliver one of the film’s most memorable soundbites.
“Stop crying. Stop crying,” he growls at the end of the scene, visibly choking down his own chuckles. “F— the shrimp.”
Improvisation came naturally in a movie that starred Williams and Broadway trained actor Nathan Lane, even though director Mike Nichols tried to limit the ad-libbing despite Williams’ protestations.
“(Robin) was always joking around and being really silly and improvising, not just within the script, but at anything that came along in life,” Azaria remembered. “If he asked you what you did that weekend and you said I went bowling, he would do a ten minute routine on bowling.”
As Armand Goldman, the owner of The Birdcage, Williams played the foil to Lane’s more melodramatic performance as the drag club’s signature entertainer, Albert. Though moments like the kitchen scene showed off Armand’s animated side, he was often more reserved in poignant scenes that grappled with his son’s impending marriage into an ultra-conservative family. That gentle disposition was a genuine quality in Williams that stuck with Azaria.
“(Robin) was always a very sweet, caring guy. He had a very sweet, calm side,” Azaria said. “He really took a genuine interest in people around him, much more so than most movie stars.”
When he accepted the role of Armand, Williams had already starred in “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Dead Poets Society” and was an unmistakable lead man onscreen. But for Azaria, whose biggest previous movie part was a supporting one in Robert Redford’s “Quiz Show,” the role of the flamboyant Guatemalan butler was a breakthrough. Azaria remembered “The Birdcage” as the only job he ever had where he stuck around hours after filming had ended to talk shop with Nichols and writer Elaine May.
“That movie, that role definitely stamped my passport, and it kind of led to me getting a bunch of roles as naked foreigners, for lack of a better term, and playing roles as silly voices,” Azaria — who voices multiple characters on “The Simpsons” — said. “It created that whole career, which I did for a long time.”
He worked tirelessly to perfect Agador’s accent, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night startled, hoping he wasn’t offending anyone with the exaggerated portrayal.
“I think whenever you have straight or gay actors portraying gays in a humorous way, you are making fun of what you also are treating lovingly at the same time,” Azaria said. “That definitely lends itself to a crossing of the line. I certainly can understand gay or Latin people having a problem with what I did… but I felt it was authentic in its own way. I definitely did my best to make him a three-dimensional person, someone who wasn’t just funny, but was also touching and sweet in his own way.”
That concerted effort to portray Agador’s yearning for the stage made the butler a complete supporting character, and it is one of the reasons why “The Birdcage” was openly praised by G.L.A.A.D for going beyond tired stereotypes. Twenty years after its release, the movie remains the highest grossing film with gay main characters of all time and a trailblazer for unconventional family stories being told onscreen.
“It was definitely an early message that a family is a bunch of people who love each other, whether they’re same sex or whatever they are,” Azaria said. “It was a story that at that point Broadway had been telling quite a lot, but not as much in movies. That’s what Mike (Nichols) was going for, that this was a family no different from any other.”
Armand’s family no longer seems so unorthodox, and his unforgettable lines about refusing to hide who he was for anybody echoed the voice of an LGBT movement that motivated the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage two decades after the film’s release. Still, Azaria acknowledged that there are further conversations to be had, further changes to be made. He cited the recent anti-LGBT “religious liberty” bill in Georgia — which has been vetoed since the News spoke with Azaria — as an example.
“I think that the battle lines have only been drawn a little harder or clearer in the sand (since the film’s release),” Azaria said. “Things have been moving forward … but it’s still gonna be part of our conversation for quite a while.”
