Ted Danson apologizes for roasting Whoopi Goldberg in blackface while 2 were involved together in extra-marital affair

Ted Danson.

Sitcom legend Ted Danson has apologized to former flame Whoopi Goldberg over a Friars Club roast in 1993 in which the actor roasted his then girlfriend while wearing blackface, a performance that even then was widely criticized.

Danson, who rose to fame playing retired relief pitcher-turned-bartender Sam Malone on Cheers, made the apology this week on a podcast hosted by W. Kamau Bell. He also went on to explain his thought processes leading up to the provocative performance. Danson and Goldberg, by then a top movie star herself, had met on the set of the movie Made in America, and began a torrid extramarital affair that resulted in the end of Danson's second marriage.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Goldberg said at the time that she wrote the material Danson ended up delivering that night while wearing blackface. She said she even recommended the makeup artist Danson used. Days after the roast, as Danson was taking heat in the press, Goldberg defended the performance, saying it was "in the tradition of the Friars Club," in on-camera interviews recorded in October 1993.

Danson explained his thought processes leading up to the roast on the podcast, saying, "My brain was going: Here is one of the most outrageous, funny black women in the world, and I'm supposed to be roasting her, and I'm not a stand-up. I can't run with the bulls. I'm an actor. If the material is funny, I can be funny." Danson added, "And then I thought, well, I can do 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. Then my mind went, well: 'I will do it in blackface.'"

The performance was so raunchy, profane and racially-charged that talk show host Montel Williams and then-mayor David Dinkins walked out of the event, according to The Los Angeles Times. At the time, Goldberg suggested Williams walking out on the performance was a stunt meant to boost the ratings of his daytime talk show. 

“I need to and want to apologize for the rest of my life,” Danson said during the podcast interview. "Your intentions do not matter. The impact you have on people is what matters,” Danson continued. “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. So I apologize again to anyone who’s listening, that I was arrogant enough to think that I had something to offer.”

Danson of course has gone on to star in movies and sitcoms in the intervening years, and Goldberg famously became a host on ABC's The View, where she almost daily puts her Trump Derangement Syndrome on display for America to see. Below, watch a clip of Danson's apology.