Accusations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby have flared up in recent weeks. Credit Victoria Will/Invision, via Associated Press
In the twilight of a long and celebrated career, Bill Cosby was experiencing the kind of comeback few longtime performers enjoy.
A new biography described his life and accomplishments. A stand-up comedy special on Netflix, commemorating his 77th birthday, was set for next week. His collection of African-American art became part of an exhibition at the Smithsonian this month. And NBC was exploring a project that would bring him back to prime time, where in the 1980s he became America’s pre-eminent TV star with “The Cosby Show.â€
But in recent weeks, his triumphant return to the national stage has fallen apart in the face of a wave of accusations by women who say Mr. Cosby drugged and raped them decades ago. On Wednesday, NBC said it was canceling the pilot project, and the cable network TV Land quietly stopped showing repeats of “The Cosby Show.†Less than 24 hours earlier, Netflix said it was postponing the debut of the comedy special. Other scheduled appearances by Mr. Cosby — on David Letterman’s late-night show and Queen Latifah’s daytime talk show — have also been canceled.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have vigorously denied the accusations in recent days, and he has never faced criminal charges. But the troubles have put the star’s comeback in limbo and created awkward situations as he seeks to burnish his legacy. Mr. Cosby’s handlers, for instance, realizing that Mr. Letterman would have to ask Mr. Cosby about the rape claims, scrapped the appearance.
The accusations against Mr. Cosby have been all the more striking because his hit TV show, his commercials for Jell-O and his best-selling books about fatherhood helped him present an image of the ideal family man.
A series of suddenly converging factors contributed to tearing that down. That included a viral video of an emerging comedian, Hannibal Buress, who bluntly called Mr. Cosby a rapist in his act, and an ill-conceived effort to solicit positive comments about Mr. Cosby on an Internet meme, which inspired a chorus of contributors to call him a rapist. In the meantime, four women have come forward publicly in recent days to repeat the decades-old accusations of being drugged, raped or molested.
The reach of the web and the impact of social media have provided a distribution platform for these accusations, which had surfaced before but never gained widespread traction.
Martin Kaplan, the Norman Lear chairman in entertainment, media and society at the University of Southern California’s journalism school, said a combination of social media and Mr. Cosby’s return to the spotlight had propelled the story to much greater prominence than when the accusations surfaced in the past.
“The fact that he was already in the public spotlight — the book, the potential deal with NBC and so on — and the fact that these charges have a much more powerful amplifier and echo chamber, it gives people the sense that this is a big story,†he said.
The current furor surrounding Mr. Cosby had its root in accusations brought in 2005 by Andrea Constand, a female staff member with the basketball team at Temple University, Mr. Cosby’s alma mater. She said she had been drugged and molested by Mr. Cosby. The district attorney in Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, Bruce L. Castor Jr., said in an interview on Wednesday that he did not feel that he had enough evidence to pursue a criminal case at the time, “despite the fact that I thought Cosby was guilty of some improper behavior — my gut told me that.â€
A subsequent lawsuit brought by Ms. Constand promised to present testimony from 13 “Jane Does†with similar accounts of sexual assault. Mr. Cosby’s lawyer called the claims false and even preposterous; the suit was settled for an undisclosed sum in 2006.
One of the unnamed women in the suit, Barbara Bowman, a former actress, came forward publicly in The Washington Post last week to describe her experiences in detail, saying she was drugged and raped by Mr. Cosby in the 1980s. But women had been describing similar episodes with Mr. Cosby in the nine years since the suit was settled. Ms. Bowman spoke about her charges to Philadelphia magazine and People magazine in 2006. Newsweek magazine had interviews with both Ms. Bowman and another accuser, Tamara Green, this February without setting off the whirlwind of attention that has surrounded Mr. Cosby in the last two weeks.
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Cosby Won’t Respond to Allegations
Cosby Won’t Respond to Allegations
During an interview on Nov. 6 with The Associated Press, Bill Cosby refused to respond to allegations of sexual assault after the reporter brought up recent reports.
Video by AP on Publish Date November 19, 2014. Photo by Evan Vucci/Associated Press.
But Mr. Cosby’s career was not ascendant at the time.
Mark Whitaker, the author of the biography that contributed to the controversy — partly because Mr. Whitaker did not address the rape charges in his book — said Mr. Cosby’s revived career had thrust him back into national attention again. “He was not hiding,†Mr. Whitaker said. “He was on the road doing 60 concerts a year. But in terms of visibility, he was doing things he had not done in quite a while.â€
Mr. Whitaker, the former top editor at Newsweek, cited events surrounding the 30th anniversary of “The Cosby Show,†the 50th anniversary of the start of Mr. Cosby’s career and two stand-up concert films that Mr. Cosby had planned. Then he agreed to try to return to prime time on NBC. “He was putting himself out there,†Mr. Whitaker said.
Mr. Whitaker said his book did not address the accusations because he could not verify them.
If the comeback brought Mr. Cosby the adulation of his fans, it also revived the outrage of his accusers. In addition to Ms. Bowman, a writer named Joan Tarshis came forward for the first time to tell a story of being drugged and raped on two occasions in 1969.
“I had wanted to get it off my chest for a long time,†Ms. Tarshis said in a telephone interview. “When I was approached by tabloids in 2005, a tabloid was not the way I wanted to go.†The piece by Ms. Bowman inspired her to finally speak out, she said.
Janice Dickinson, a well-known former model, added her name to the list of accusers, saying Mr. Cosby brought her to Lake Tahoe in 1982 and drugged and raped her. That charge has drawn the most virulent response; a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, Martin Singer, called Ms. Dickinson’s claim a “fabricated lie.â€
Another of Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, John P. Schmitt, earlier had made a blanket denial of the charges by the women as “old and discredited.â€
In some states, for serious sexual crimes, prosecutions would still be timely. But Benjamin Brafman, an experienced criminal defense lawyer who represented Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said there would be serious obstacles in making any criminal case against Mr. Cosby at this stage because of the passage of time and the lack of forensic evidence.
The end of the prospective project with NBC may be the most painful development for the comedian. Several people with knowledge of the project said that it originated when Mr. Cosby approached the network with an idea to return to weekly situation comedy. A deal like that would almost surely include a penalty payment to the comic if the project was terminated early.
NBC was excited enough about the prospect that it announced the project to the news media in July, very early in the process. By all accounts, the decision to drop it now was influenced by the news swirling around Mr. Cosby.
Many other stars have bounced back from accusations that damaged their reputation, but Mr. Cosby may find that challenging. The harsh judgment of social media will be difficult to overcome, Mr. Kaplan of the University of Southern California said.
“Social media is many things, among them it gives people a belief of what people are talking about,†he said, “which is something larger than what they see on television or read in the papers.â€
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the accusations brought in 2005 by Andrea Constand. She said she had been drugged and molested by Bill Cosby, not drugged and raped.
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