Ted Danson apologized on W. Kamau Bell’s “Who’s With Me?” podcast for wearing blackface during a 1993 New York Friars Club roast of Whoopi Goldberg—recalling why he did it, why he knows it was wrong, and how the fallout resurfaced years later.
Ted Danson didn’t wait for the internet to do it for him.
On W. Kamau Bell’s “Who’s With Me?” podcast, released June 3, the “Cheers” star—now 78—returned to a moment he describes as “stupid” and “hurtful,” apologizing for his blackface performance more than 30 years after it happened.
In the 1993 New York Friars Club roast of Whoopi Goldberg. Danson appeared in blackface. used a racial slur numerous times. and ate watermelon. Then-New York City Mayor David Dinkins slammed the material as “way. way over the line. ” and the dean of the New York Friars Club apologized to anyone who was “discomforted and offended by the racial remarks. ” according to The New York Times.
Danson’s apology comes with a specific memory of what he told himself back then—and a blunt admission that what he intended did not matter.
“I know what was in my heart, so I have no problem talking about this,” Danson said on the podcast. “But I need to, and want to, apologize for the rest of my life. Because somebody today can go on the internet. you’re right. and go … ‘Wow. I feel betrayed. I feel angry. ’ and whatever. And I did that.”.
He said his decision was shaped by feeling out of place. He wasn’t, by his own account, a stand-up comedian, and he worried he wasn’t equipped to roast Goldberg—describing her as “one of the most outrageous, funny Black women in the world.”
“So, I decided I’d try to ‘do performance theater,’” he said. He added that he watched tapes and convinced himself that if he were Black, he would “have license” to make outrageous jokes.
“Then my mind went, well, I will do it in blackface. That will be funny. or not. but it will be. ‘Oh. I have license now to [tell the jokes]. ’” he said. “He continued, ‘I thought I could pull this off. 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. So off I go, using all this horrendous language, describing our love affair, in blackface.”.
Danson later said he believed he was doing “a satire” on race, but he emphasized that intention doesn’t cancel impact.
“It doesn’t matter. Your intentions do not matter. The impact you have on people is what matters,” he said. “And if you haven’t thought through that, then you need to. 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. … I apologize again to anyone who’s listening. that I was arrogant enough to think that I had something to offer.”.
That framing is where the apology turns personal. Danson said his wife, Mary Steenburgen, “couldn’t understand” what he was thinking, and he described being “scared” when the incident resurfaced years later—after he was dropped “from certain things, corporate things,” according to his account.
Others responded to the original performance in ways that still echo in how the moment is remembered.
At the time. film critic Roger Ebert wrote that “the audience was groaning and Danson faltered as he tried to plow through his written material. ” adding that the “train wreck” showed that “the painful history of black-white relations in America is still too sensitive to be joked about crudely.” Slate later described the episode as “one of the biggest. messiest blackface scandals of the modern era.”.
Not everyone who knew Danson then condemned the premise. Whoopi Goldberg defended him. saying Friars Club roasts were meant to be “vulgar” and “outrageous. ” and that “why anyone would take offense to Ted’s roasting me in the tradition of the Friars Club is beyond me. ” through a statement shared with The New York Times.
On the podcast, Bell also defended Danson, telling the actor that “I’ve seen the man you’ve been since then” and that his apology is going to “teach other White people like yourself how to do that.”
Through Danson’s own words. the through-line is consistent: a decision he now calls arrogant. a belief that he later rejects. and the lasting weight of what people felt. The “rest of my life” apology wasn’t delivered as a quick correction—it was framed as a reckoning that he says he will carry forward.
Ted Danson blackface apology Whoopi Goldberg Friars Club roast Mary Steenburgen W. Kamau Bell Who’s With Me? podcast David Dinkins