Ted Danson feels eternally remorseful over doing blackface at Whoopi Goldberg’s roast in 1993.
“I would like to address this and apologize forever. I know what was in my heart. So, I have no problem talking about this,” the Man on the Inside star, 78, said during the Tuesday, June 2, episode of W. Kamau Bell‘s “Who’s With Me” podcast. “But I need to and want to apologize for the rest of my life because somebody today can go on the internet, you’re right, and go, ‘What the f***? Wow. I feel betrayed. I feel angry and whatever.’ And I did that.”
Danson, who was dating Goldberg, now 70, at the time, participated in the roast which was put on by the Friars Club. The Cheers actor explained on Tuesday that he and Goldberg’s relationship was coming to an end and they both tried to get out of the event but ultimately could not. Danson shared that he didn’t have a background in comedy and was unsure how to proceed.
“So my brain was going, ‘OK, here is one of the most outrageous, funny, Black women in the world at that point. I’m supposed to be roasting her,” he reflected. “And I’m not a standup. I can’t run with the bulls.’”
Danson acknowledged that he can only “be funny” if the “material” he is performing is comedic in nature. So after giving it a thought, he decided to go down the “performance theater” route.
“I looked at all these tapes and it’s like well, if I were Black, I could say all these outrageous things. I’m not. Then my mind went, well I’ll do it in blackface. That will be funny or not.”
Danson confessed that he thought he could pull it off which he now realizes was “so arrogant and stupid.” He also shared that he ran his bit by Goldberg before taking the stage. Looking back on it now, he thinks the actress didn’t want to put down his “creativity.”
“I worked on this for months … and within 20 seconds I was like I stuck my finger in a light socket,” he recalled. “20 percent of the crowd gets this and thinks it’s pretty cool and gets it. 30 percent of the crowd gets it and f**king hates it. 50 percent of the crowd didn’t get it and f***ing hated it and hated me. And I kept going.”
Danson received backlash immediately for it and the act has lived with him to this day. Goldberg, for her part, has defended Danson multiple times for it — which he feels immense remorse for.
“Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me over the years, sweetly and gracefully,” he said on Tuesday. “The last thing she probably wants to do is be put in this position again.”
