Ted Danson said he would "apologize for the rest of his life" for appearing in black makeup at a party for Whoopi Goldberg at the Friars Club in 1993.
«"I need and want to apologize for the rest of my life because today someone can go online and say, 'What the hell? Wow, I feel betrayed, I'm angry.' And I did," the actor said on Wednesday's episode of the W. Kamau Bell podcast.„ "Who's with me?"» .
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Danson's speech at the event, which drew backlash from attendees and public figures such as former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, came while he and Goldberg were having an affair and included racist remarks and jokes about their sex life.
Danson said their romance was ending and he tried to back out of the event, but the Friars Club said, "We're going to sue you," Danson recalled with a laugh, "because they sold too many tickets.".
«"I'll explain what was going through my head, not as an excuse," he said.
«I felt like I was facing one of the most outrageous, funniest Black women in the world,„ he added. “And I’m supposed to make fun of her, and I’m not a stand-up comedian; I can’t run with bulls. So I thought, „What am I supposed to do?“ And then I thought, „Well, I can do performance art.„ I looked at all these tapes and I thought, «If I were a Black man, I could say all these outrageous things. But I’m not a Black man; then it occurred to me, »I’m going to do this in makeup, and whether it’s funny or not, it’s going to be like, “Now I have agency.»”.
He recalled how the press at the time treated them harshly as a mixed couple in an affair, focusing only on their sex life.
«"It couldn't be because they liked each other or saw something in each other... It had to be just sex, that's the only reason for this relationship," he said. Although he wanted to talk about their relationship humorously, he became increasingly "heartbroken.".
He claimed he "kind of latched on" to a line Goldberg said in her speech that she didn't care whether people used the N-word because people didn't have to "use offensive language" to be racist.
«"I thought I could pull this off," he added. "There's no one in the world whiter than me. It was stupid and presumptuous that I thought this white guy could say anything valuable about race and race relations.".
Over the course of several months of work on the bit, he recalls showing it to Goldberg, but assumed she didn't want to trample on his creative potential. The backlash was immediate.
«"After 20 seconds, I realized, 'I stuck my finger in the socket,'" he said.
«"Twenty percent of the crowd got it and thought it was pretty cool. Thirty percent of the crowd got it and couldn't stand it. Fifty percent of the crowd didn't get it and couldn't stand it and couldn't stand it and hated me. And I kept going," Danson recalled, adding that upon returning to the hotel, he had to call Mayor Dinkins.
«"My poor manager said he couldn't open his hotel room door because there were so many notes stuck under the door," Danson added.
Danson said he justified his actions by saying he knew his intentions. "My intention was love," he said. "It doesn't matter.".
«"Your intentions don't matter. What matters is the impact you have on people," he said. "And if you haven't thought about that, you need to. I thought I could compete with the powers that be, but I couldn't. It was stupid, it wasn't for me, it was wrong, and it hurt... So I apologize again to everyone listening for being arrogant enough to think I had anything to offer.".
In 1993, Goldberg stated The New York Times newspaper, that this situation "caused great pain to a person who did not deserve it.".
Danson apologized to Goldberg again for raising the issue: "Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me all these years, so sweetly and gracefully. So the last thing she wants to do is probably be in that situation again.".
He added that his wife, Mary Steenburgen, "couldn't understand" why he did it, and after footage of Danson's speech surfaced during the Black Lives Matter movement, he said he "got sidelined a little bit from some corporate stuff, and I got scared.".
It was then that Jane Fonda introduced him to Heather McGee, the author of the book «The Price of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Thrive Together »", which helped Danson reflect on his actions: "She didn't make excuses for me. She said, 'This is an opportunity that I hope you take advantage of.'".
Bell said he asked Danson if there was anything he didn't want to talk about and gave him credit for speaking out about the blackface makeup incident.
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