Billy Dee Williams, who played Darth Vader in the Star Wars films, said that actors should be able to perform in blackface if they want to. The 87-year-old actor recalled laughing while watching a film where a character is in blackface, and he thought the performance was really interesting. He said that he fell out laughing when he saw him in the show. I like that kind of stuff.
Williams asked why they would never let you do that.
You should do it, said Williams. If you are an actor, you should do whatever you want to do.
Williams objected to the fact that he couldn't play the part he should've played. Williams said that the point is that you don't go through life feeling like a victim. I will not be pissed off 24 hours a day.
Williams said that if he was going to be creative, he should be an individualist. I don't want to do things based on the idea that I'm a black person or a white person.
Williams is best known for his performance as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, and has appeared in more than 100 roles across film, stage and television. In an interview with the Guardian in February, Williams recalled that James Baldwin wanted him to play Malcolm X in a film he wrote. Williams said he thought the idea of Brando playing a Black civil rights activist was "hysterical but a little bit interesting". There are a lot of things you can do. If you are good at using your imagination, you can do some really interesting stuff without doing the obvious to achieve what you want to achieve.