Ted Danson, who rose to sitcom stardom as the barkeeper Sam Malone on “Cheers,” apologized in a podcast released on Wednesday for appearing in blackface and his repeated use of a racial slur while roasting the 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 apologize for the rest of my life,” Danson told the comedian W. Kamau Bell on Mr. Bell’s podcast, “Who’s With Me?”
Outraged by what he had seen and heard, the 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 color to hold the office, described the jokes as “way, way over the line.” And the dean of the friars, a fraternal club, apologized.
“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 the 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 having been 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.”
Danson offered an apology to Goldberg.
“Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me over the years, sweetly and gracefully,” he said.
A spokesman for Goldberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Danson said he had instantly recognized his disastrous miscalculation.
“Within 20 seconds,” he said, “I was like, I stuck my finger in a light socket.”
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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