Billy Dee Williams Explains Why He's Okay with Actors Wearing Blackface
Billy Dee Williams is sharing his thoughts on actors wearing blackface.
If you didn’t know, blackface is the practice of non-black performers using black makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or on film.
In a new interview, the 87-year-old Star Wars actor looked back at the late English actor Laurence Olivier wearing blackface in the 1965 movie adaption of Othello.
Keep reading to find out more…“When he did Othello, I fell out laughing,” Billy recalled on the Club Random with Bill Maher podcast.
“He stuck his ass out and walked around because Black people are supposed to have big asses…I fell out laughing,” he added.
“And Bradley Cooper thinks he’s got a problem with the nose,” host Bill Maher noted of Bradley Cooper wearing a prosthetic nose to portray composer Leonard Bernstein in Maestro.
“I thought it was hysterical,” Billy chimed in. “I love that kind of stuff.”
Bill then said, “Today, they would never let you do that.”
However, Billy said that actor’s doing blackface doesn’t bother him because, “If you’re an actor you should do anything you want to do.”
Bill then pointed out that Billy once “actually lived in a period where you couldn’t do that. Where you couldn’t play the part.”
“But it didn’t matter,” Billy argued. “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.”
A few years ago, Billy came out as gender fluid.