Bill Cosby

Bill Cosby (born July 12, 1937, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American comedian, actor, and producer who played a major role in the development of a more-positive portrayal of Blacks on television but whose sterling reputation was tarnished by dozens of accusations of sexual assault over the course of many decades. In 2018 he was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, but his conviction was overturned three years later.

Early life and career

Cosby left high school without earning his diploma and joined the U.S. Navy in 1956. While enlisted he passed a high-school equivalency exam, and after his discharge he received an athletic scholarship to Temple University in Philadelphia in 1961. During his sophomore year he left Temple to entertain at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, New York City, where he began to establish a trademark comedic style characterized by a friendly and accessible stage persona and a relaxed, carefully timed delivery. During the 1960s Cosby toured major U.S. and Canadian cities, commanding ever-higher performance fees. In 1965 he made his first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

TV success: Fat Albert and The Cosby Show

Cosby’s first acting assignment, in the espionage series I Spy (1965–68), made him the first Black actor to perform in a starring dramatic role on network television. His portrayal of a Black secret agent won him three Emmy Awards and helped to advance the status of African Americans on television. Cosby’s subsequent projects for television included the series of Bill Cosby Specials (1968–71, 1975), the situation comedy The Bill Cosby Show (1969–71), the variety show The New Bill Cosby Show (1972–73), and the successful cartoon Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972–84, 1989). He appeared in numerous commercials and on children’s shows such as Sesame Street and Electric Company. He also made several feature films, which enjoyed limited success.

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Cosby’s most-successful work was The Cosby Show, which appeared on NBC from 1984 to 1992 and was one of the most-popular situation comedies in television history. The Cosby Show depicted a stable, prosperous Black family—Cosby’s character was a doctor whose wife was a lawyer—and avoided racial stereotypes. The show had broad cross-cultural appeal and won several major awards. After the show ended, he starred in the series Cosby (1996–2000), in which his Cosby Show costar Phylicia Rashad again played his wife.

Cosby was awarded a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1977 and was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1984. His comedy records earned him eight Grammy Awards. In 1986 he wrote the best-selling book Fatherhood. In 1997 Cosby’s son, Ennis, was shot and killed while changing a tire on a Los Angeles freeway; that same year he and his wife, Camille, founded the Hello Friend/Ennis William Cosby Foundation in their son’s memory to fund teachers of students with learning disabilities. Cosby was outspoken about the need for African Americans to pursue higher education and to support their families. In 2008 he released the hip-hop album Cosby Narratives Vol. 1: State of Emergency, which blended jazz, pop, and funk but shied away from the profanity he said was typical of most hip-hop music.

Sexual assault allegations

Allegations of past sexual assaults by Cosby gained increasing media coverage in the United States in the early 21st century. In 2005 he was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand the previous year; at the time of the alleged incident, she was working at Temple University. Later in 2005 District Attorney Bruce L. Castor, Jr., announced that he would not charge Cosby, citing insufficient evidence. The comedian then gave a deposition in a civil suit brought by Constand, and in 2006 he settled out of court, paying her more than $3 million. That case spurred a number of other women to go public with their own stories of drug-induced sexual assault by Cosby, and in February 2014 a series of media interviews with some of his alleged victims made headlines. Those allegations and a much-viewed video of an October performance by comedian Hannibal Buress in which he called Cosby a rapist prompted even more women to accuse Cosby of past sexual misconduct. While he had not faced charges related to the new accusations, his reputation was so damaged by them that both NBC and Netflix pulled planned Cosby projects in November 2014.

In the following months the total number of women who accused Cosby of either attempting to drug them, drugging them, or drugging and raping them ballooned to more than 50. Cosby vehemently denied the accusations and publicly labeled some of his accusers as liars. He was subsequently sued by those women for defamation. In July 2015 court documents related to the 2005 civil suit against Cosby were unsealed, and it was revealed that he admitted at the time to having obtained prescription sedatives to give to women with whom he wanted to have sex.

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In December 2015 a new district attorney in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, charged Cosby with felony aggravated indecent assault for the 2004 incident involving Constand, just days before the statute of limitations was set to expire. In 2016 Cosby’s legal team sought to have the case thrown out, alleging that Castor had actually declined to file charges as part of a deal in which Cosby agreed not to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the civil trial. Although Castor later supported the defense’s claim, no written agreement existed, and Constand and her lawyers stated that they had no knowledge of such a deal. The criminal trial against Cosby was allowed to proceed, and it ultimately included his 2005 testimony. In 2017 the trial ended in a hung jury and a mistrial after six days of jury deliberation without a unanimous decision. A retrial began in April 2018, and that same month he was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand. In September he received a sentence of 3 to 10 years in prison. Cosby appealed the verdict, and in June 2021 his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which ruled that there was an enforceable agreement between Castor and Cosby. The court ordered the comedian’s release and barred a retrial.

Cosby’s legal issues continued, however. In 2014 Judy Huth had filed a civil suit against the comedian in California, alleging that he had sexually assaulted her in 1975, when she was 16 years old. (In that state the statute of limitations is extended for cases involving allegations of child molestation.) The trial began in 2022, and the jury ruled in Huth’s favour. Cosby was ordered to pay $500,000 in compensatory damages.