BILLY D. WILLIAMS SAYS ACTORS SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO BLACKFACE

Entertainment Weekly

 

Billy Dee Williams says actors should be able to do blackface

"If you’re an actor, you should do anything you want to do," the actor told Bill Maher.

By Jessica Wang  Published on April 8, 2024

 

Billy Dee Williams believes actors should be able to do blackface.

 

The Star Wars actor shared his thoughts during this week's episode of Bill Maher's Club Random podcast while discussing the late actor and director Laurence Olivier, who famously used blackface in the title role of 1965's Othello.

 

Praising Olivier's performance, Williams said, "When he did Othello I fell out laughing. He stuck his ass out and walked around because Black people are supposed to have big asses."

 

"And Bradley Cooper thinks he’s got a problem with the nose," Maher said, referencing the controversy surrounding Cooper's prosthetic nose as Leonard Bernstein in last year's Maestro.

 

Williams said of Olivier, "I thought it was hysterical. I loved it. I love that kind of stuff."

 

"Here’s the thing," Maher said. "Today, they would never let you do that."

 

"Why?" Williams asked.

 

An incredulous Maher said, "Blackface?"

 

"Why not? You should do it," Williams replied. "If you’re an actor, you should do anything you want to do."

 

"The point is," Williams added, "you don’t go through life feeling like, 'I’m a victim.' I refuse to go through life saying to the world, 'I'm pissed off.' I'm not gonna be pissed off 24 hours a day."

 

Williams has been promoting his recently-released memoir What Have We Here? Portraits of a Life, which chronicles his childhood in Harlem leading up to his days on Broadway and in Hollywood. He famously portrayed the first Black character, Lando Calrissian, in the Star Wars universe.

 

In an interview with The Guardian earlier this year, Williams said he didn't concern himself with racial politics. “I never think of myself in terms of the only Black character," he said. "Everybody else might think of it that way. In my reasoning in my own head, I’m just a character. A character has certain qualities that make a character a winning character in a movie or a character that is not able to translate very well. I’ve been able to translate very well across the board. . . I don’t really think in terms of Black. I couldn’t care less about all that garbage.”

 

At age of 87, “I find myself a walking absurdity," he later added. "I chuckle at myself or about myself all the time. At this stage in my life I don’t need to apologize for anything.”