Star Wars actor Billy Dee Williams has said that actors should be able to perform in blackface in a new interview.
Speaking on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, Williams recalled watching Laurence Olivier in 1965’s Othello, in which Olivier wore blackface to portray the title role.
He told the podcast: “When he did Othello, I fell out laughing. 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,” Williams added. “I love that kind of stuff.”
Maher replied and said an actor would never be allowed to do this today because of blackface.
He replied: “Why not? You should do it. If you’re an actor, you should do anything you want to do.”
Maher asked Williams, 87, why he felt like that considering he “actually lived in a period where you couldn’t play the parts you should’ve played.”
“The point is that you don’t go through life feeling like, ‘I’m a victim,’” Williams continued. “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 conversation, Williams said: “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 has been recently promoting been promoting his new memoir What Have We Here? Portraits of a Life, which explores his childhood in Harlem to his career on Broadway and Hollywood.
The actor is best known for his role as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise.