Ted Danson Apologizes For Doing Blackface At Then-Girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg's Roast Over 30 Years Ago: 'Arrogant And Stupid'

Ted Danson forever regrets his blackface stunt at Whoopi Goldberg‘s roast more than three decades ago.

Back in 1993, the 78-year-old actor went full-on minstrel blackface while roasting his then-girlfriend at the Friars Club. And that’s not all! Ted even reportedly used the N-word multiple times in the speech, offending everyone in the audience that night! At the time, Whoopi defended him, arguing they “were not trying to be politically correct,” they “were trying to be funny.” No one is laughing, though. It’s disgusting. And there’s no excusing or defending his behavior. But The View host also admitted she wrote most of Ted’s jokes and hired the artist who painted him in blackface. WTF.

Thirty years later, Ted is addressing the racist incident again — and offering up an apology. During an appearance on the Who’s With Me? podcast earlier this week, the Cheers alum said he wants to “apologize forever” over his actions:

“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. I would like to address this and apologize forever. I know what was in my heart, so I have no problem talking about this. But 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 f**k? Wow, I feel betrayed, I feel angry.’ And I did that.”

Looking back, Ted said he and Whoopi had an affair that was coming to an end at the time of the roast, so they tried to get out of the event. However, the Friars Club threatened to sue them because they “had sold so many tickets.” With no choice but to continue with the roast, Ted decided he wanted to at least try to keep up with the other comics in the room then — and came up with a very “stupid,” offensive, and hurtful stunt:

“So my brain was going, ‘OK, here is one of the most outrageous, funny Black women in the world, at that point. And I’m supposed to be roasting her and I’m not a stand-up, I can’t run with the bulls. I’m an actor at best.’ So I was like, ‘God, what am I gonna do?’ And then I thought, ‘Well I can do performance theater.’ 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.’”

Ted also noted that back then, he and Whoopi faced a lot of criticism over their interracial relationship:

“It couldn’t be because they liked each other or saw something in each other … It had to be just pure sex, that’s the only reason for a relationship like this.”

And he “latched on to” Whoopi’s comments that she didn’t care about people using the N-word because she thought you didn’t need “nasty language” to be racist. Again, What. The. Eff. He continued:

“It had a real f**king edge to it. I thought I could pull this off. I thought that, there’s no one been whiter than me in the world, that this white guy could have something valuable to say about race and race relations was so stupid and entitled. I thought, ‘Oh, I can be Robin Williams. I can step up, and I can pull this off. I know it’s bold, but I can pull this off.’ And that was so arrogant and stupid on my part.”

Despite working “for months” on the roast, the whole thing fell apart “within 20 seconds.” Ted added: