good friend

Ted Danson is apologizing for roasting onetime paramour Whoopi Goldberg while wearing blackface.

It was the fall of 1993 at the Friars Club in Manhattan, and the occasion was a roast of the “Sister Act” star, who at the time called Danson her “best friend.” Danson, fresh off the heels of an 11-season run on “Cheers,” and Goldberg, who was at the height of her film career, had been tangled up in a not-so-secret love affair that sprang up while filming “Made in America.” Danson was freshly split from his second wife, producer Cassandra Coates, who served him divorce papers after the tabloids outed his fling with Goldberg earlier that year.

To make matters messier, Danson and Goldberg’s romance was cooling off and the two actually tried to get out of the Friars roast, but the club said the tickets had been sold and the show must go on.

According to The Times’ archives, Goldberg said she wrote the racial-slur-laden monologue that Danson delivered wearing black minstrel makeup with exaggerated lips in white. On the podcast, Danson said he’d been preparing for the skit for months, sure he was going to nail it. “Within 20 seconds I was like, I stuck my finger in a light socket,” Danson told W. Kamau Bell on the “Who’s With Me?” podcast.

At least two among the more than 2,000 guests at the roast protested. TV talk show host Montel Williams walked out, and New York City Mayor David Dinkins left the event early.

“My brain was going: Here is one of the most outrageous, funny Black women in the world, and I’m supposed to be roasting her, and I’m not a stand-up. I can’t run with the bulls. I’m an actor; if the material is funny, I can be funny,” Danson said.

“And then I thought, well, I can do performance theater. I looked at all these tapes, and it’s like, well if I were Black, I could say all these outrageous things, I’m not. Then my mind went, well, I will do it in blackface.”

Danson prefaced discussing the incident by saying that if he stammered throughout it was because it was uncomfortable talking about an affair he had when he was married, and that he’s been married to his third wife, Mary Steenburgen, for 32 years.

As for the blackface incident, “I have no problem talking about [it],” he said, adding that he wants to apologize for the rest of his life for the major flub. Although the incident happened more than three decades ago, internet fodder lasts forever, and Danson said he wanted to address it because somebody today can happen upon the incident online and think, “What the f—?”

Danson continued, “That this white guy could have something valuable to say about race and race relations was so stupid and entitled.”

He said he thought: “I know it’s bold, but I can pull this off, and that was so arrogant and stupid on my part. So off I go using all this horrendous language describing our love affair, while also in blackface. And I’d run it past Whoopi, and maybe she just didn’t want to squelch my creativity. … I worked for months, by the way, months.”

Earlier in the conversation, Bell told Danson that he wanted to give him his flowers for knowing how to apologize in public. “How to say ‘oops.’”

Former Lakers assistant coach Damon Jones became the first among 34 defendants to plead guilty Tuesday in an expansive gambling indictment that also ensnared Hall of Fame player Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat star Terry Rozier and organized crime figures.

Jones was a Lakers coach in 2022 and 2023, long after he retired from an 11-year NBA playing career with 11 teams. Before a Feb. 9, 2023, game between the Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks in which LeBron James was a late scratch because of a foot injury, evidence showed that Jones urged a co-conspirator to “get a big bet on Milwaukee before the information is out!”

Jones urged his co-conspirator in a text: “Bet enough so Djones can eat to [sic] now!!!”

Jones and James were considered good friends for years. A person close to James told The Times in October that the Lakers star didn’t know that Jones was selling injury information to gamblers placing bets.

Jones had entered not guilty pleas in November to the two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in sports betting and rigged poker game schemes. However, during back-to-back hearings in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, he entered guilty pleas to those charges.

Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 6 before separate judges in the two cases. Guidelines call for 21 to 27 months in prison for the sports gambling charge and 63 to 78 months for the charge on rigged poker games. Prosecutors said they agreed to shave 15 months from the sentence in exchange for Jones pleading guilty by April 30.

He pleaded guilty in the sports betting case first. In a prepared statement, he acknowledged that he conspired with others to defraud sports betting companies by using “insider information that I obtained as a result of my relationships as a former player.”

Jones, 49, said the goal of the sports betting conspiracy was to use his insider knowledge of injuries to players to make money gambling.

“I would like to sincerely apologize to the court, my family, my peers and also the National Basketball Association,” said Jones, who was paid $21 million as a player.

Next came pleading guilty to participating in rigged poker games. Jones admitted that he was paid to use his NBA celebrity to lure deep-pocketed gamblers to poker games in Miami and New York.

Again reading from a statement, Jones said that, based on conversations with his co-conspirators at poker games, “I knew these games were rigged and that players were being cheated.”

And again he concluded with an apology, addressing the court, his family and friends.

“I’m really sorry to everyone involved for my actions,” he said.

Prosecutors said Monday they would seek additional charges against Rozier in the sports betting case because they had developed evidence that the 10-year NBA veteran solicited a bribe during an alleged gambling scheme.

According to the original indictment, when Rozier played for the Charlotte Hornets in 2023, he told friends he was planning to leave a game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing others to place wagers. Rozier has made $135 million as a player.

Billups, who played with the Clippers for two seasons and later was a member of Clippers coach Ty Lue’s staff before being named head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2021, is charged with rigging underground poker games that authorities said were backed by three of New York’s Mafia families. Billups, who was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2024, made $107 million as a player.