Billy Dee Williams says actors should be allowed to wear blackface

CNN
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Actor Billy Dee Williams Said There's Nothing Wrong With What Artists Wear black facebecause if you're an actor you have to do whatever you want.

Speaking to Bill Maher on the Random club Podcast, released Sunday, the conversation on the issue began with Williams, 87, discussing white actor Laurence Olivier's performance as the titular black character in the 1965 film Othello.

Although Olivier wore blackface, Williams said he thought it was a really interesting performance.

When he did Othello, I burst out laughing, he said. He took 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 liked it. I love this stuff.

The origins of blackface date back to minstrel shows of the mid-19th century.

White artists darkened their skin with shoe polish and cork, donned ragged clothing, and exaggerated their features to look stereotypically black.

The first minstrelsy shows African slaves impersonated on plantations in the American South, depicting black people as lazy, ignorant, cowardly or hypersexual, according to the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

The performances were intended to be funny to white audiences. But for the black community, they were humiliating and hurtful.

Maher then said that Olivier would not play the role now.

Here's the problem: Today, they would never let you do that, he says.

Williams then asked why, to which Maher replied: Blackface?

Williams insisted: why not? You should do it.

If you're an actor, you have to do whatever you want, he said. As an actor, anything you think you can do, you should be able to do, he said.

Maher then pointed out that Williams actually lived in a time where you couldn't do that, where you couldn't play the role you should have played, in reference to segregation in the United States.

Williams, who is best known for playing Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, pushed back.

But that doesn't matter, he says. Of course it happened, but the point is that you are discussing it. The point is, you don't go through life thinking I'm a victim.

I refuse to go through life telling the world: I'm pissed. I'm not going to be angry 24 hours a day.

In an earlier part of the interview, Williams also mentioned his desire to be recognized as an individual.

If I want to be creative, let me be creative as an individualist. I don't want to do anything based on this idea that you're a black person, you're a white person and things of that nature, he said. I am an artist. I am a creative entity in this life.

In 2019, Williams spoke about embracing different parts of her character by using gender-fluid pronouns.

And you see, I say himself and herself, because I also consider myself feminine and masculine, he said in a interview with Esquire magazine. I am a very gentle person. I'm not afraid to show this side of me.

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