Ted Danson will 'apologize for the rest of my life' for infamous blackface performance at Whoopi Goldberg roast

Raechal ShewfeltWed, June 3, 2026 at 1:02 PM UTC

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Ted Danson in March
Credit: Monica Schipper/WireImageKey Points -

Ted Danson opened up about his infamous performance at a Whoopi Goldberg roast in 1993.

He thought the roast would be private, and he had prepared for months.

There was immediate backlash from officials, and Danson hates that the story lives online.

Ted Danson is still sorry for what he said at the infamous roast of Whoopi Goldberg at the New York Friars Club in 1993. And he doesn't expect that to change.

"I need to and I want to apologize for the rest of my life," Danson said on W. Kamau Bell's new podcast Who’s with Me, "because somebody today can go on the internet and go, 'What the f---? Yeah. Wow, I feel betrayed, I feel angry and whatever.' And I did that."

The that is roasted Goldberg in a routine that included multiple uses of the N-word and raunchy jokes delivered in blackface. Danson had been the toastmaster.

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He had taken the assignment to roast Goldberg, with whom he was in a relationship, very seriously.

"So my brain was going, okay, here is one of the most outrageous, funny Black women in the world at that point," Danson said. "I'm supposed to be roasting her, and I'm not a stand-up."

So he said he took the assignment seriously. But, he told Bell, he hadn't realized the events of the evening would go out to the world. He thought it would be shown on a closed-circuit broadcast.

They were met with backlash quickly. Talk show host Montel Williams, who is Black, even walking off the dais, per TheNew York Times. Mayor David N. Dinkins, who was also Black, called them "way, way over the line." The Friars Club publicly apologized.

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Danson hadn't expected to offend anyone.

Ted Danson and Whoopi Goldberg
Credit: Amanda Edwards/Getty; TheStewartofNY/WireImage

"I thought I was doing a satire on race relationships," Danson said. "And, you know, mixed couple relationships, and I thought I was being edgy."

He said that he'd convinced himself that he could do it, by delivering 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," Danson said. "Then my mind went, well, I will do it in blackface."

He explained that he'd worked on his act for months, even "run it past Whoopi," but he knew within seconds that it was not going over well.

He said it was like he had "stuck my finger in a light socket," with half the crowd not "getting it" and also "hating" his act.

For her part, Goldberg defended Danson.

on Entertainment Weekly

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