Actor Billy Dee Williams is sharing his thoughts about actors wearing blackface. The veteran actor, said this on the Club Random with Bill Maher podcast while discussing the-late English actor Laurence Olivier, who appeared in the 1965 film version of Othello in blackface.
“When he did Othello, I fell out laughing,” Williams recalled. “He stuck his ass out and walked around because black people are supposed to have big asses…,” Williams said in the podcast that premiered on Sunday, April 7. “I fell out laughing.”
Furthermore, in the conversation, Bill Maher joked about Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose in portraying Leonard Bernstein in Maestro, a film that was so widely acclaimed. He pointed out how today’s standards would prohibit such portrayals due to issues like blackface. But Williams said he ‘loved that kinda stuff’.
Host Maher further pointed out the shift in societal norms today and said
Maher then pointed out that Williams once “actually lived in a period where you couldn’t do that. Where you couldn’t play the part.”
“But it didn’t matter,” responded Williams. “The fact is … 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.”
Speculations around Billy Dee Williams’ gender identity and sexuality
The actor has become quite candid in recent years, telling PEOPLE in February, “I figured maybe I need to talk about a few things that might interest a few people. I’ve had a lot of very interesting experiences throughout the years.”
In his memoir, What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life, released that month, Williams revealed that Marlon Brando once hit on him during a party at Brando’s home. Williams declined the legendary actor’s advances, saying, “I prefer women.”
The memoir followed a 2019 Esquire interview where he raised speculation about his gender identity and sexuality after sharing that he sees himself as “feminine as well as masculine.” Williams later clarified his comments in an interview with The Undefeated.
“But what I was talking about was about men getting in touch with their softer side of themselves,” the actor said in part. “There’s a phrase that was coined by Carl G. Jung, who was a psychiatrist, who was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, and they had a splitting of the ways because they had different ideas about the… what do you call it? Consciousness. Unconscious. It’s a collective consciousness,” he went on to say.
Details about Billy Dee Williams’ memoir
In Billy Dee Williams’ new memoir, What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life, the veteran artist reflects on his almost eight decades in theater, film, and television.
At 86, The actor writes about his childhood experiences with anecdotes to Lando Calrissian in the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, to his many love stories and heartbreaks, to the sweetness of success and the bitterness of experiencing failure—the book has a bit of everything.
In a previous interview with PEOPLE, the book’s editor, shared a statement, “Billy Dee Williams has had a fascinating life and career. The book he writes is fun and, like Billy, hard to resist and draws you in.”
Wilson calls the memoir “a riveting, inspiring portrait of a spirit unlocked, a portrait of an actor who loves life.” “So many people over the years have let me into their life,” Williams states. “Now it’s my turn to let people into [mine.]”
The memoir was published on February 13, 2024.
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