Ted Danson says he’s “forever apologetic” for Blackface incident in 1993
Ted Danson has apologised for a “stupid” incident in 1993, where he wore Blackface at a celebrity roast, directing his comments at Whoopi Goldberg amid an affair they were having.
Appearing at the New York Friars Club, Danson served as the toastmaster in blackface, while using the n-word multiple times in his “stupid” and “hurtful” address.
While appearing on W. Kamau Bell’s Who’s With Me? podcast, Danson touched upon the incident, insisting, “I need to and I want to apologise for the rest of my life. Because somebody today can go on the internet and go, ‘What the fuck? Yeah. Wow, I feel betrayed, I feel angry,’ and whatever. And I did that.”
Despite his legal marriage to Casey Coates at the time of the roast, Danson and Goldberg were engaging in an 18-month-long public romantic affair that ended weeks later.
As the A Man on the Inside actor approached the event, he recalled, “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, and I’m not a stand-up.”
The Emmy Award-winning actor continued, “So off I go using all this horrendous language, describing our love affair, while also in Blackface. And within 20 seconds, I was like, I stuck my finger in a light socket.”
The 78-year-old addressed the Sister Act star in his apology, sharing, “Whoopi, I apologise if you’re listening. But Whoopi and I had an affair. And it was ending, and we actually asked the Friars Club; we’d already agreed to do it, and then our relationship was ending, and we said ‘Well, we should get out of this.’”
After organisers threatened to sue if he didn’t show, Danson added, “The press and the news were not the healthiest — the news were going after us, you know, mixed race and affair.”
Danson wanted to tackle the “mean” nature of the news on its head; he worked for “months and months” on the script and cleared everything with Goldberg beforehand.
The reception was not what he desired: “Twenty per cent of the crowd gets this and thinks it’s pretty cool and gets it. Thirty per cent of the crowd gets it, and fucking hates it. Fifty per cent of the crowd didn’t get it and fucking hated it and hated me. And I kept going.”
Danson, who has since been dropped by some “corporate things” across the years due to the resurfacing of the clip, shared, “I am forever apologetic. The other thing I used to say for the longest time, ‘I knew what my intention was. My intention was love.’ [But] it doesn’t matter. Your intentions do not matter. The impact you have on people is what matters. And if you haven’t thought through that, then you need to.”
He concluded, “I apologise again to anyone who’s listening that I was arrogant enough to think that I had something to offer.”
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