Billy Dee Williams expressed his views on actors wearing blackface
The 87-year-old actor discusses the late English actor Laurence Olivier who wears blackface while appearing in the 1965 movie Othello during the Club Random With Bill Maher Podcast.
Billy Dee Williams told that he fell out laughing on seeing Olivier in Othello, who was who was impersonating a black person and was walking around with his ass stuck out because it was a common stereotype that black people have big asses.
William thought it was hysterical and expressed how much he loved those kinds of stuff. Then Maher said that those kinds of stuff are not allowed according to today’s standards. Maher became shocked when Billy Dee Williams replied “Why?”
Maher thought he may have heard something wrong and said “Blackface?” William explained to Maher that if he is an actor, he should do anything you want as you must portray the character. As an artist you have to be creative and don’t want anything to do anything based on this idea that you are black, you are white and things like that. Also read – C J Snare the Lead singer of “FireHouse” passed away at the age of 64
Maher then explained that Williams once “really lived in an era where you couldn’t do that. Where you couldn’t play a role.”
Williams explained, “The point is that you don’t have to go through life feeling like, ‘I’m suffering.’ “I refuse to go through life telling the world, ‘I’m angry.’ “I will not be angry 24 hours a day.”
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Details About Billy Dee Williams’ Memoir
In Billy Dee Williams’ new memoir, What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life, the veteran actor reflects on his nearly eight decades in theatre, film, and television.
At 86, the actor writes about his childhood experiences, his many love stories and the heartbreaks, sweetness of success and bitterness of experiencing failure, with anecdotes of Lando Calrissian in the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy and many more.