Ted Danson says one sorry just doesn't cut it for what he did on stage in 1993, Entertainment Weekly reports. "I need to and I want to apologize for the rest of my life," the actor said on W. Kamau Bell's new podcast while discussing his notorious Friars Club roast of then-partner Whoopi Goldberg, where he appeared in blackface and used the n-word repeatedly. "Somebody today can go on the internet and go, 'What the f---? ... I feel betrayed, I feel angry,'" he said on the episode that aired Wednesday. "And I did that." He said he thought he was performing "satire" and was "arrogant and stupid" at the time to think he could pull it off, USA Today reports.
Danson said he approached the roast as "performance theater," aiming for what he thought was edgy satire about race and interracial relationships, and even says he workshopped the material with Goldberg. He believed the routine would air only on closed-circuit TV, not reach a wider audience. As People explains, Friars Club roasts were typically private events at the time. Backlash was swift: Montel Williams reportedly walked off the stage, New York City Mayor David Dinkins called the act "way, way over the line," and the Friars Club apologized. Danson recalls realizing within seconds that the routine was bombing—"like I had stuck my finger in a light socket"—though Goldberg publicly defended him at the time. Danson apologized to her for that on the podcast, noting, "The last thing she probably wants to do is have [to] be put in this position again."
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