Matteo Lane on mastering the comedic journey with authenticity and laughter as a gay entertainer (exclusive)

Lane’s ability to speak multiple languages (he speaks Italian, Spanish, French, and German — the latter learned from an Austrian teacher in high school) isn’t just a party trick; it’s a bridge to wider audiences and a testament to his diverse heritage. “I can do a little bit [of] German, [and] I’m now speaking Spanish all the time in Italian,” Lane said, laughing at the quirks of juggling languages. His linguistic skills are more than just communication tools; they are extensions of his identity, enabling him to connect with a global audience while staying true to his roots. Lane has performed for audiences in Italy and will be traveling to Germany for a run of shows there. During his current show, The Al Dente Tour, Lane talks about a time he traveled to Italy and ran into Oprah Winfrey.

Lane’s discussion about the nuances of gay culture across different languages was enlightening and entertaining. “There’s a gay voice in every language,” Lane observed during his performances at the Comedy Cellar in New York.

He said that his conclusions about the intriguing phenomenon regarding the “gay voice” across various languages were fueled by his unique interactions with a diverse nightly audience. Each evening, while performing to a different crowd—not specifically there to see him, which provides a rich backdrop for his informal surveys— he’d ask the audience.

He said that he would probe the multilingual audience, inquiring if they can identify a “gay voice” in their native language.

“Whether they were speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, or Japanese, I would ask, ‘Can you hear gay voices in another language?’ And they would always say ‘yes.’ And so I’m like, ‘okay, this must be like an international thing of like the sort of gay flair,’” he said.

“Because I can hear it in Italian, I can hear it in Spanish,” Lane added. “You know, it’s just so funny to me.”

The conversation took a light-hearted turn in the interview when Lane’s husband, Rodrigo Aburto, made an appearance in “very short shorts,” having just returned from a cycling class where, according to Lane, “they do what seems to me like impossible things, and then you know comes home and acts like nothing happened.”

The news coverage of his wedding to Aburto last August was funny to Lane. The couple, who opted for a modest ceremony at city hall, did not anticipate the media attention their union garnered.

“We were shocked by that,” Lane said. “Someone said to us the next day, ‘Oh, all these magazines wrote articles about you guys getting married, and I was like, ‘What? I’m not Dianne Keaton. I’m not Mariah Carey!”

He added that he had wondered, “How slow in gay news was it that day that my marriage made it to all these different outlets?”

As the interview wrapped up, with the anticipation of his Uber Eats order beckoning (he ordered eggs and bacon), Lane detailed the nights spent refining jokes and constantly pursuing the perfect set. “It’s a lot of work,” he said.

“I really saw myself as Mariah Carey, and I landed as a gay comic, so when they say ‘shoot for the moon, you’ll reach the sun, or you’ll reach the stars’ or whatever, this is me reaching the stars,” he chuckled. “I got pretty close.”