On October 8, 1993, more than 3,000 people packed into the New York Hilton hotel for the Friars Club roast of Whoopi Goldberg. The roastmaster for the event was Cheers star Ted Danson, who was dating Goldberg at the time. To the surprise of many in attendance, Danson took the stage that evening wearing blackface, complete with big white lips painted around his mouth. He also sported a tuxedo and top hat, much like blackface performers were known to do when minstrel shows were still popular.
On top of that, Danson reportedly used the n-word over a dozen times and made vulgar jokes about his sex life with Goldberg. He evidently even bit into a watermelon at one point during his act. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go over well with some of the black people on the dais, namely talk show host Montel Williams and David Dinkins, who was New York City’s first black mayor. Speaking of Danson’s jokes afterward, Dinkins said that “many were way, way over the line.”
For his part, Williams walked out seven minutes into Danson’s set and immediately resigned from the Friars Club. In a telegram to the organization, Williams wrote, “I was confused as to whether or not I was at a Friars event or at a rally for the KKK and Aryan Nation.” Additionally, he claimed that Danson’s jokes about racially mixed kids actually made his wife cry (Williams was married to a white woman at the time, with whom he had two children).
The Infamous Whoopi Goldberg Roast Where Ted Danson Showed Up in Blackface
Another person who was shocked was Goldberg herself, but not for the reason you’d think. Her surprise didn’t come from Danson being in blackface or any of the racial humor he incorporated into his monologue; she was upset over the controversy it caused. In fact, according to Goldberg, she helped write most of Danson’s routine, which she said was in response to all the hate mail the two had received about their relationship. That wasn’t just her covering up for Danson due to the backlash, either; on the night of the roast, she was quoted as telling the crowd, “I don’t care if you don’t like it. I do.”
The event remains one of the most infamous roasts in the history of the Friars Club, yet no footage of Danson’s performance has surfaced to date. A 30-second audio clip of Danson’s entrance that night is all that’s known to exist. You can check it out for yourself below.
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