Ted Danson has stated he will continue to apologize indefinitely for appearing in blackface during a 1993 roast of Whoopi Goldberg.
In an appearance on W. Kamau Bell’s podcast “Who’s With Me?,” the “Cheers” and “The Good Place” actor discussed the controversial event at the New York Friars Club, which took place while he was romantically involved with Goldberg. The roast included racial slurs and jokes about their relationship, sparking criticism from attendees and public figures, including David N. Dinkins, New York City’s first Black mayor.
“I need to and want to apologize for the rest of my life because somebody today can go on the internet and go, ‘What the fuck? Wow, I feel betrayed, I feel angry.’ And I did that,” Danson remarked.
Danson admitted that as their relationship was ending, they attempted to cancel the roast, but the Friars Club had “sold so many tickets.”
“My brain was going, OK, here is one of the most outrageous, funny Black women in the world. And I’m supposed to be roasting her and I’m not a stand-up, I can’t run with the bulls. So I was like, ‘God, what am I gonna do?’” Danson explained. “And then I thought, ‘Well I can do performance theater.’ And 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, I will do it in blackface and that will be funny or not, but it will be like, ‘I have license now.’ … I thought I could pull this off.”
He expressed regret for believing he, as a white person, had something valuable to contribute to discussions on race, describing it as “so arrogant and stupid on my part.” He realized he was wrong shortly after the roast began. “Within 20 seconds, I was like, ‘I stuck my finger in a light socket.’ … I thought I was doing a satire on mixed relationships, and I thought I was being edgy.”
For a long time, Danson justified his actions by claiming his intentions were not malicious, but he acknowledged to Bell that “it doesn’t matter.”
“Your intentions do not matter. The impact you have on people is what matters,” he stated. “And if you haven’t thought through that, then you need to. I thought I could run with the big boys, and I couldn’t. And it was stupid and it was not my place, and it was wrong and it was hurtful … So I apologize again to anyone who’s listening, that I was arrogant enough to think that I had something to offer.”
Danson also apologized to Goldberg for bringing up the incident again, saying: “Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me over the years, sweetly and gracefully. So the last thing she probably wants to do is be put in this position again.”
Goldberg defended Danson at the time, stating that she had written much of the material. “We were not trying to be politically correct. We were trying to be funny for ourselves,” she said in a statement.
A representative for Goldberg did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
Watch Danson’s full interview on “Who’s With Me?” below.
