Billy Dee Williams believes it is fine for actors to wear blackface.
The Star Wars star doesn’t have a problem with white people using makeup to darken their skin tone to play characters of different ethnicities because he believes those in the profession should be able to “do anything” they want.
Appearing on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, Williams recalled Laurence Olivier wearing blackface for his performance in 1965’s Othello.
“When he did Othello, I fell out laughing. He stuck his [butt] out and walked around with his [butt], you know, because Black people are supposed to have big [butts],” the Mahogany star said.
“And Bradley Cooper thinks he’s got a problem with the nose,” Maher quipped referring to the prosthetic donned by the Oscar-winning star in Maestro.
“I thought it was hysterical. I love that kind of stuff,” Williams added.
“Today, they would never let you do that,” Maher noted, continuing the conversation.
“Blackface?!” Williams asked. Maher was shocked and then asked Williams why he said that.
“Why not? You should do it. If you’re an actor, you should do anything you want to do,” the Lady Sings the Blues star insisted.
Maher noted his guest had “lived in a period where you couldn’t play the parts you should’ve played,” but the Batman actor insisted he wasn’t annoyed about it.
“The point is that you don’t go through life feeling like, ‘I’m a victim.’ I refuse to go through life saying to the world, ‘I’m p***** off.’ I’m not gonna be p**** off 24 hours a day,” Williams said.
Earlier this year, the actor insisted he never thought about his ethnicity when it comes to the characters he plays.
“I never think of myself in terms of the only Black character. Everybody else might think of it that way. In my reasoning in my own head, I’m just a character,” Willaims stated.
“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,” he told The Guardian.
