The short exchange was excruciatingly awkward. Bill Cosby, veteran comedian and one of the biggest American television stars of the 1980s, was being interviewed on Weekend Edition Saturday on radio station NPR when host Scott Simon turned to recently resurfaced allegations that the 77-year-old entertainer had drugged and sexually assaulted women.
"This question gives me no pleasure, Mr Cosby, but there have been serious allegations raised about you in recent days," Simon asked him without referring specifically to the case of Andrea Constand (32), whose sexual-assault civil lawsuit was settled in 2006 or the 13 other unnamed women her lawyers had lined up to testify against the comic. He was met with silence. "You're shaking your head: no," said Simon.
The host wouldn’t let it go. “I’m in the news business – I have to ask the question: do you have any response to those charges?” he asked.
Again, there was silence. “Shaking your head: no,” Simon said.
He tried again. “There are people who love you who might like to hear from you about this – I want to give you the chance,” he said. Again, Cosby said nothing. The interview, conducted with his wife Camille on their African-American art collection, wrapped up seconds later.
The mounting pressure on Cosby brought a response from his camp the following day. His lawyer, John P Schmitt, said on Sunday the comic would not dignify “decade-old” and “discredited” claims of sexual abuse. The fact that the allegations were being repeated “does not make them true”, he said.
The murky allegations surrounding the entertainer re-emerged last month when Hannibal Buress, a black comedian from Cosby’s hometown of Philadelphia, labelled him a “rapist” in an onstage routine that was videoed and went viral online.
The long-standing accusations against Cosby contrast with the wholesome image created by the performer when NBC's The Cosby Show broke the ethnic mould in American entertainment and dominated the television ratings between 1984 and 1992.
The show, which followed the day-to-day lives of the Huxtable family, helped revive the television sitcom format and opened the door for many other African-American performers. As Dr Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable, Cosby was the US’s perfect Dad, funny and loving, offering sage advice and promoting personal responsibility with his fictional children and, by proxy, to the wider American community.
Thirteen women Buress tackled Cosby on his position as a role model for African-Americans in a cutting sequence that referred to the 13 women who were lined up to testify against him in Constand’s civil action.
“Thirteen? And it’s even worse because Bill Cosby has the f****** smuggest old black man public persona that I hate. ‘Pull your pants up, black people; I was on TV in the Eighties. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom!’ Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches,” said the 31-year- old comedian.
The allegations threaten to overshadow Cosby in the twilight of a career that is still very much alive. He refused to answer questions about the allegations in an interview with the Associated Press last week in which he discussed the opening of an exhibit about the art collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Another AP interview scheduled for this week, to discuss an upcoming project on Netflix, the online film and television subscription service, was cancelled.
The allegations could yet plague another Cosby project. NBC has announced that the comedian would appear as the patriarch in a multigenerational sitcom slated to be broadcast next year. The official line from the network is that the programme is going ahead.
An appearance on Late Show with David Letterman scheduled for tomorrow night was cancelled. Another appearance on The Queen Latifah Show on October 30th was also postponed.
Online move backfired The growing public unease about Cosby was seen when his public relations team invited fans to generate a funny online thread in an effort to stir positive coverage. The move backfired with internet users acerbically riffing on the sexual assault allegations against him.
Some of the accusations against the star are markedly similar. Constand, a former employee at Temple University in Philadelphia, claimed Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted her at his mansion in the city in 2004. She alleged he had offered her pills he had claimed were herbal medication to reduce stress. She took three, she claimed, felt drowsy and then the assault occurred.
Another woman went public last week. In a first-person article in the Washington Post, former actress Barbara Bowman said she was one of the 13 anonymous "Jane Does" due to provide testimony in Constand's lawsuit that was settled for an undisclosed sum.
In a hard-hitting account reigniting the allegations, Bowman wrote about how Cosby won her trust as a 17-year-old aspiring actress in 1985, “brainwashed me into viewing him as a father figure and then assaulted me multiple times”.
Now an artist and married mother of two in Arizona, Bowman complained she had been trying to get her story heard – and believed – for almost a decade.
“Only after a man, Hannibal Buress, called Bill Cosby a rapist in a comedy act last month did the public outcry begin in earnest,” she wrote.
Now out there more publicly than ever before, the allegations show no signs of going away, particularly in vacuum of silence left by the working comic.
