Accusations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby have flared up in recent weeks. Credit Evan Vucci/Associated Press
In the latest fallout from the sexual assault accusations involving the comedian Bill Cosby, NBC and Netflix have set aside projects with Mr. Cosby, and a lawyer for him issued a denial of a new claim from a woman who said he raped her decades ago.
NBC said on Wednesday that it had dropped plans to develop a new situation comedy starring Mr. Cosby. The decision followed a week of revelations about accusations of rape and sexual assault against him.
NBC offered no comment on the decision and did not say that it was directly related to the fusillade of accounts of previous claims of assault that at least five women have made against Mr. Cosby.
Netflix released a brief statement Tuesday night saying that it had decided to shelve a show commemorating the comic’s 77th birthday, which was scheduled to appear on the service starting Nov 28. The statement read: “At this time we are postponing the launch of the new stand-up comedy special, ‘Bill Cosby 77.' â€
In the NBC project, which is still in the early stages of development and did not have a finished script, Mr. Cosby, who was one of the biggest prime-time comedy stars in the history of NBC, was to have played the patriarch of a large family in the new show.
The decisions come in the face of a wave of reaction to decades-old accusations of sexual assault against Mr. Cosby that have flared up again in recent weeks. In a television interview on Tuesday, the former model Janice Dickinson became at least the fifth woman to come forward with on-the-record accusations that Mr. Cosby assaulted her.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers had, until Tuesday, issued only a blanket denial of all the accusations, denouncing them as “old and discredited.†They said they and the comedian would have no further comment on the case.
But after Ms. Dickinson appeared on the show “Entertainment Tonight,†saying Mr. Cosby took her to Lake Tahoe, where he drugged and raped her, Martin Singer, a prominent entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles, labeled Ms. Dickinson’s account “an outrageous and defamatory lie†in a letter he sent to the entertainment trade news site The Wrap.
Notably, in a later comment on the original blanket denial, another of Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, John P. Schmitt, specifically excluded the one case Mr. Cosby has settled — with a woman named Andrea Constand. Mr. Schmitt made a joint statement with Ms. Constand’s lawyer, which read: “The statement released by Mr. Cosby’s attorney over the weekend was not intended to refer in any way to Andrea Constand. As previously reported, differences between Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand were resolved to the mutual satisfaction of Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand years ago.â€
The Cosby legal camp has also not explained its characterization of the other accusations as “discredited.â€
The furor has clearly put Mr. Cosby’s career in limbo. He has been compelled to cancel a number of television guest appearances, most recently one originally scheduled for Wednesday with David Letterman. The Netflix special had been promoted for some time by the streaming service.
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