Comedian Bill Bellamy is defending Tim Allen after a recent interview with Allen and Toy Story 4 co-star Tom Hanks reignited racism allegations against the Last Man Standing actor.
During a recent press interview to promote the new Pixar movie, Hanks and Allen were asked about the card game Spades, which is popular in the black community. While Hanks, who pointed out that he grew up in Oakland, was fully aware of the game, Allen did not.
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“I don’t know what you guys are talking about… I don’t have any idea what you guys just said,” Allen said in the interview. “I’m going to say I do just because I want to move on. Should I get a cup of coffee, or something…?”
The interview went viral, with Allen’s name trending on Twitter as some people began calling him racist.
On Wednesday, TooFab caught up with Bellamy, a comedian who appeared in HBO’s Insecure last year, to get his opinion on the situation.
“Ah come on, man! You can’t do that to Tim Allen,” Bellamy told the site in Los Angeles. “[He’s] like comedy legend, royalty, hall of fame. I mean if he ain’t know what Spades was that’s alright. A lot of people don’t know dominoes or dice.”
Bellamy suggested he would not know anything about beer pong if you asked him.
“It’s actually a dope ass game but if you don’t drink beer you’re not going to get into beer pong and if you go to a local bar it’s gonna skip you,” he said. “I’m the type of dude I just walk into a local bar and some cool white guys were playing beer pong and I was like, ‘What the hell is that? And the next thing you know I’m boink, boink! It’s fun as hell!”
The allegations of racism came after Allen’s 2013 interview with the Tampa Bay Times resurfaced. In the interview, Allen appeared to defend using the n-word in his stand-up.
“If I have no intent, if I show no intent, if I clearly am not a racist, then how can ‘n—’ be bad coming out of my mouth?” Allen asked. He went on to claim that he was using the word regularly in his act at the time, adding, “[the phrase] ‘the N-word’ is worse to me than n—.”
In other interviews, Allen admitted he likes to “mess around” with public perceptions because nothing gets people more riled up than a funny conservative.
“I like to mess around because I’ve been a standup fiery comic for 30 years. And I like pissing people off, and I said there’s nothing, especially in this area, that pisses people off more than a very funny conservative,” Allen told IndieWire back in November 2018. “A smart, funny conservative that takes shots and is certainly self-effacing.”
Allen has voiced Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story franchise since the first film was released in 1995, and has joined Hanks in all the sequels and various TV specials over the years. He returned for Toy Story 4, which is now in theaters.
Allen also stars in Fox’s Last Man Standing, which will return for an eighth season in the winter. However, it will not air on Fridays in 2020 since FOX will air WWE Smackdown Live.
Photo credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
