4 June 2026
Ted Danson has again apologised for his controversial blackface performance.
Ted Danson has again apologised for his controversial blackface performance
The Cheers and The Good Place actor, 78, revisited the incident during an appearance on Who’s with Me?, a new podcast hosted by comedian and filmmaker W. Kamau Bell, with their conversation partly focused on the performance Ted delivered while dating actor and comedian Whoopi Goldberg at the height of their relationship.
Ted’s routine, which took place during a Friars Club roast honouring Whoopi, now 70, drew widespread condemnation after details emerged beyond the private event and remains one of the most controversial moments of the star’s long career.
Ted said: “I would like to address this and apologise forever.
“I know what was in my heart. So, I have no problem talking about this, but I need to and want to apologise for the rest of my life because somebody today can go on the Internet, you’re right, and go, ‘What the f***? Wow. I feel betrayed. I feel angry and whatever’.
“And I did that.”
Ted explained his blackface performance took place as his relationship with Whoopi was coming to an end and after the pair had unsuccessfully attempted to withdraw from the event.
He said: “So my brain was going, ‘Okay, 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. I can’t run with the bulls’.”
He said he eventually decided to approach the appearance as what he described as “performance theatre”, before settling on an idea he now regards as fundamentally wrong.
Ted said: “I thought I could pull this off… (it was) so arrogant and stupid on my part.”
The actor recalled the audience reaction inside the room quickly turned against him.
He said: “Twenty percent of the crowd gets this and thinks it’s pretty cool and gets it. Thirty percent of the crowd gets it and f****** hates it. Fifty percent of the crowd didn’t get it and f****** hated it and hated me.
“And I kept going.”
Ted also discussed the intense scrutiny he and Whoopi faced as an interracial couple during the early 1990s.
He said: “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.”
According to Ted, criticism intensified almost immediately after the performance.
Whoopi publicly defended Ted at the time, telling The New York Times in 1993 the controversy “has caused great hurt to a man who doesn’t deserve it”.
However, Ted said her support did not lessen his responsibility.
Discussing the renewed attention the incident received during the Black Lives Matter movement, when clips resurfaced online, Ted admitted: “I was scared.”
He credited activist and author Heather McGhee with helping him think more deeply about the consequences of his actions after being introduced by actor and activist Jane Fonda.
Ted said: “She wasn’t giving me a pass. She was saying, ‘This is an opportunity that I hope you take’.”
He added: “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’ – it doesn’t matter. Your intentions do not matter. The impact you have on people is what matters.”
Later in the conversation, Ted returned to the subject once more.
He said: “I thought I could run with the big boys and I couldn’t, and it was stupid and it was not my place and it was wrong and it was hurtful.”
He added: “So, I apologise again to anyone who’s listening that I was arrogant enough to think that I had something to offer.”
