In an April 2024 conversation with Bill Maher, Billy Dee Williams said actors should be free to take on any role, while discussing Laurence Olivier’s blackface portrayal of Othello. The comments contrast with Williams’s February 2024 statement that blackface was unnecessary. The two remarks came in different conversations, and the published accounts do not provide a definitive explanation for the difference.
What did Billy Dee Williams say?
Williams made the widely reported remarks during an April 2024 episode of Bill Maher’s Club Random. The discussion turned to Laurence Olivier’s 1965 film performance as Othello, a Black character portrayed by Olivier, who was white, in black makeup. Williams said he found Olivier’s performance funny and loved it. When Maher remarked, “Here’s the thing: today, they would never let you do that,” Williams responded, “Why? Why not? You should do it.” He added, “If you’re an actor, you should do anything you want to do.” (Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2024; The Guardian, April 9, 2024)
Williams framed his position as a matter of creative freedom. Later in the exchange, when Maher referred to limits Williams had encountered in his own career, Williams objected to living with a sense of victimhood and said he did not want to be angry all the time. Those are Williams’s stated views; the exchange should not be treated as a definitive account of casting practices or as representative of Black performers generally.
What had Williams said about blackface before?
In a separate Guardian interview published February 21, 2024, Williams discussed a film James Baldwin had written about Malcolm X and a reported discussion at Columbia Pictures about casting Marlon Brando. Asked about blackface in that context, Williams said, “You don’t have to do blackface. There are lots of things you can do.” He added that imagination could be used “to do some really interesting stuff without doing the obvious.” (The Guardian, February 21, 2024)
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| Conversation | Context | Williams’s reported words |
|---|---|---|
| February 2024, The Guardian | A discussion of a James Baldwin screenplay about Malcolm X and the possibility of Brando in the role. | “You don’t have to do blackface. There are lots of things you can do.” |
| April 2024, Club Random | A discussion of Olivier’s 1965 Othello and Maher’s comment about what actors could do in contemporary entertainment. | “Why? Why not? You should do it,” and “If you’re an actor, you should do anything you want to do.” |
The contrast is clear: in February, Williams described blackface as unnecessary and pointed to alternatives; in April, he defended an actor’s freedom to do anything for the craft while discussing a particular performance. The available accounts do not show Williams reconciling the two statements, so it would be speculative to claim they express a single settled position or that one cancels out the other.
Why does Olivier’s performance carry a wider historical context?
Blackface is not only a matter of an individual actor’s performance or intent. It has roots in minstrel shows, where performers used makeup and caricature to portray Black people in racist ways. CNN’s report carried by WRAL attributes its account of this history to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture; the Los Angeles Times also describes blackface in the context of minstrel performance and the exclusion of Black performers from mainstream entertainment. (CNN report carried by WRAL, April 9, 2024; Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2024)
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That history helps explain why Olivier’s black makeup in Othello is contentious. Williams’s positive reaction to Olivier’s performance is his individual assessment; it does not erase the racist history of blackface or settle how the practice should be viewed today.
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