Whoopi Goldberg Plays, but Not Too Much, Working at Cuomo Event ALBANY - Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his staff like to stick to a script. So they took a chance by tapping Whoopi Goldberg as part of the entertainment for the governor's birthday fund-raiser at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan on Monday night, an unpredictable performer as fans of "The View" can attest. "Those fund-raisers are notoriously straight," Ms. Goldberg said in an interview on Tuesday. I didn't want to freak anybody out by saying bad words or doing dirty jokes. He's the governor. Attendees, however, said Ms. Goldberg had a bit of a rocky start in front of a somewhat stiff crowd of several hundred people, but quickly found her footing. No reporters were allowed to attend. She followed Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy, a former Rochester mayor, who gave one of his typically upbeat assessments of the governor, and who also talked warmly about upstate New York. Ms. Goldberg went on and told the largely white crowd, "there are no blacks upstate," adding, "they all came down here for jobs!" one member of the audience recalled. It was a great line and people were laughing - nervous laughter. There was a lot of nervousness in the room when she said that. After a performance by the singer-songwriter John Legend, Ms. Goldberg returned to the stage and said she had been told she had to stick to a script. "She ripped each page as she read it," another member of the audience said. She said the governor has been great at restoring integrity. It says here you did a lot of great things in Albany, where apparently we lost our minds. Blah blah blah. Yadda yadda yadda. The governor is great. "She was sharp," a third attendee said. I don't think she was comfortable in reading off the pages of the accomplishments. In a very pronounced way, she would tear off the pages she read. The governor's staff has been known to write praise-filled encomiums about the governor for outside groups to recite. But Ms. Goldberg said the whole thing was a joke and she had no problem working from a script. "They were very good to me," she said of Mr. Cuomo's aides. They said whatever you want to do, here's the stuff we want to get out, because it's not like I could take an hour and do me. "They staple like 10 pages together, so I read it off, and I was moving the pages along," she said. The governor, who turned 55 last month, focused his own remarks later in the evening on his priorities heading into his State of the State address on Wednesday - notably stricter gun-control legislation, including a tighter ban on assault weapons. There were between 500 and 700 people at the fund-raiser, attendees said, and "about 25" African-Americans, Ms. Goldberg said - "including me and John Legend." "I know you're looking for Bill Murray," she said she told the crowd. He's not here.