00:00Why I would like to address this is and apologize forever.
00:04I know what was in my heart, so I have no problem talking about this,
00:11but I need to and want to apologize for the rest of my life
00:14because somebody today can go on the internet, you're right, and go,
00:18what the f***? Wow, I feel betrayed, I feel angry, and whatever.
00:23And I did that.
00:25Ted Danson vows he will apologize forever for his 1993 blackface stunt
00:30at his then-girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg's roast.
00:33The Cheers alum regretfully reflected on the incident during his June 3rd appearance
00:37on W. Kamau Bell's Who's With Me podcast,
00:41praising Goldberg for her handling of the incident before owning up to his arrogant mistake.
00:46Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me over the years, sweetly and gracefully,
00:51so the last thing she probably wants to do is have this, you know,
00:55be put in this position again.
00:57In audio from the 1999 doc, Let Me In, I Hear Laughter, A Salute to the Friars,
01:03Goldberg is allegedly heard laughing at Danson's offensive bit.
01:07However, no footage from the infamous event has ever surfaced publicly.
01:24At the time, his relationship with Goldberg was slowly being put on ice,
01:28and while they tried to get out of the roast, the Friars Club, which hosted it,
01:32threatened to sue them if they dropped out because they had sold so many tickets.
01:36The actor then explained that his intention was to pull an over-the-top stunt
01:40in order to keep up with the comics in the room.
01:42So my brain was going,
01:44okay, here is one of the most outrageous, funny black women in the world at that point,
01:48and I'm supposed to be roasting her, and I'm not a stand-up.
01:51I can't run with the bulls.
01:53I'm an actor at best.
01:54So I was like, God, what am I going to do?
01:57And then I thought, well, I can do performance theater.
02:00I looked at all these tapes, and it's like,
02:02well, if I were black, I could say all these outrageous things.
02:05I'm not.
02:06Then my mind went, I will do it in blackface, and that will be funny or not,
02:10but it will be like, I have license now.
02:12Danson noted how during this time, he and the color purple star were constantly getting negative comments in the press
02:18over their interracial relationship.
02:20But despite working for months on the bit, things quickly went left within 20 seconds of his performance.
02:25At the time, Goldberg defended Danson's blackface bit after it received public backlash.
02:30Goldberg addressed it in a 1993 press conference, per Deseret News,
02:35admitted to writing most of Danson's jokes and hiring the artist who painted him in blackface.
02:40The View co-host also read a statement from Danson that read,
02:43There was too much love behind my words to ever be misconstrued as racist.
02:47The pair met on the 1993 film Made in America and began an affair while Danson was married.
02:53They dated for about 18 months before ending the relationship.
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