Billy Dee Williams has said that actors should be able to perform in blackface, with the Star Wars actor revealing that he believes, “If you’re an actor, you should do anything you want to do”.
Speaking to Bill Maher on the Club Random podcast, the 87-year-old actor recalled laughing while watching the 1965 film Othello, where the titular character played by Laurence Olivier is in blackface. Williams said he thought the performance was “really interesting”.
“When he did Othello, I fell out laughing,” he said. “He stuck his ass out and walked around with his ass, you know, because Black people are supposed to have big asses … I thought it was hysterical. I loved it. I love that kind of stuff.”
When Maher replied: “Here’s the thing: today, they would never let you do that.” Williams asked, “Why?”
“Blackface?” Maher said, incredulously.
“Why not? You should do it,” Williams said. “If you’re an actor, you should do anything you want to do … As an actor, whatever you think you can do, you should be able to do it.”
When Maher remarked that Williams “actually lived in a period where you couldn’t do that, where you couldn’t play the part you should’ve played”, Williams objected.
“But it didn’t matter. Of course it happened but the fact is, you discuss it. The point is, that you don’t go through life feeling like, ‘I’m a victim,’” Williams said. “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.”
Earlier in the interview, Williams also told Maher: “If I’m going to be creative, let me be creative as an individualist. I don’t want to do anything based on this whole idea that ‘you’re a Black person, you’re a white person’ and things of that nature. I’m an artist. I’m a creative entity in this life.”
Williams is best known for his performance as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, and has appeared in more than 100 roles across film, stage and television including Brian’s Song and Batman.
In an interview with the Guardian in February, Williams recalled a film his friend James Baldwin wrote, for which Baldwin wanted Williams to play Malcolm X. He revealed that film studio Columbia Pictures has discussed Marlon Brando playing the Black civil rights activist, which Williams thought was “hysterical but a little bit interesting”.
Asked about how he felt about blackface then, Williams said: “You don’t have to do blackface. There are lots of things you can do. Most people in my mind are very provincial and myopic in their vision of the world. All you have to do is use your imagination and, if you’re good at using your imagination, you can do some really interesting stuff without doing the obvious to achieve whatever it is you’re trying to achieve.”
