‘I apologise for the rest of my life’: Ted Danson sorry for 1993 blackface roast of Whoopi Goldberg

Ted Danson, who rose to sitcom stardom as barkeeper Sam Malone on Cheers, apologised in a podcast for appearing in blackface and his repeated use of a racial slur while roasting actress Whoopi Goldberg more than three decades ago.

Danson, now 78, was involved romantically with Goldberg at the time of the 1993 celebrity roast, which was hosted by the New York Friars Club.

His monologue, peppered with jokes about Goldberg’s anatomy and their sex life, drew intense criticism that has trailed the actor over the years.

“I need to and want to apologise for the rest of my life,” Danson told comedian W. Kamau Bell on Bell’s podcast Who’s With Me?, released in the US on Wednesday.

Outraged by what he had seen and heard, television host Montel Williams stormed off the dais at the roast. David N. Dinkins, the city’s mayor at the time and the first person of colour to hold the office, described the jokes as “way, way over the line.” And the dean of the friars, a fraternal club, apologised.

“That was so arrogant and stupid on my part,” Danson said of his actions.

While discussing the scandal on the podcast, the actor, who is also known for his roles on CBS television show Becker and the movies Three Men and a Baby and Three Men and a Little Lady, said he and Goldberg had tried to back out of the roast because their extramarital affair was ending. But with hundreds of tickets already sold to the celebrity roast, he said, they could not.

“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,” he said. “And I’m not a stand-up. I can’t run with the bulls.”

Danson said he spent months working on his monologue for the roast, which he acknowledged as being flawed from the start.

“Well, if I were Black, I could say all these outrageous things,” he said. “I’m not. Then, my mind went, well, I will do it in blackface. That will be funny or not, but it’ll, like, be – oh, I have license to.”

He added: “I thought I could pull this off. There’s no one that’s been whiter than me in the world.”

“Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me over the years, sweetly and gracefully,” he said.

Danson said he had instantly recognised his disastrous miscalculation.

“Within 20 seconds,” he said, “I was like, I stuck my finger in a light socket.”