More than 30 years later, Ted Danson has had plenty of time to reflect on his scandalous behavior at Whoopi Goldberg's 1993 party.
The three-time Emmy Award winner recently stressed that he "forever apologizes" for wearing black makeup during his appearance at New York's Friars Club, explaining that he "thought I was being funny" after making a satirical joke about their interracial relationship during the stand-up routine.
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«"Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me all these years, sweetly and gracefully," he began on the podcast. Who's With Me?. «"So the last thing she probably wants is to find herself in that situation again.".
Danson added, "I'd like to set the record straight and apologize forever. I know what was in my heart, so I have no problem talking about it. But I have to 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.".
Noting that he and Goldberg had an affair that was ending around the time of the event, Danson recalled that they tried to back out of the event, but the Friars threatened to sue them because they "sold too many tickets.".
«"At that moment, my brain was going, 'Okay, here's one of the most outrageous and funniest black women in the world. And I'm supposed to make fun of her, but I'm not a stand-up comedian, I can't run with bulls. I'm an actor at best,'" he explained.
«"And I was like, 'Oh my God, what am I going to do?' And then I was like, 'Well, I can do theater,'" Danson said. "I looked at all these tapes and I realized, 'If I were a Black woman, I could say all sorts of outrageous things. But I'm not a Black woman,' and then I was like, 'I'm going to do this in makeup, and whether it's funny or not, it's going to be like, 'Now I have the right to do this.'".
Danson continued, "I thought I could do it. I thought there was no one in the world whiter than me, that this white guy could say something valuable about race and race relations—it was so stupid and arrogant. I thought, 'Oh, I can be Robin Williams. I can get on stage and do this. I know it's bold, but I can do it.' And that was so arrogant and stupid of me.".
After months of working on the chisel, everything went wrong "in 20 seconds." "It was like sticking my finger in a power outlet," he recalled.
At the time, Goldberg defended Danson, later admitting that she wrote most of the jokes herself, inspired by the racist sentiment surrounding their relationship. "We weren't trying to be politically correct. We just wanted to make jokes for ourselves," she said in a statement.
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