Bill Cosby
A year ago,
Bill Cosby,
armed with a pitch for a new TV show, began taking meetings with
network executives. The idea was simple: Re-create the magic of
The Cosby Show with a sitcom built for a new generation.
"There is a viewership out there that wants to see comedy, and
warmth, and love, and surprise, and cleverness, without going into the
party attitude," Cosby told Yahoo TV in November 2013. Partnered with
Tom Werner, who executive produced his seminal hit with
Marcy Carsey, Cosby quickly found a willing buyer: NBC, which aired
The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992. (Simultaneously, Cosby was looking to develop a new version of
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, but it's unclear whether that was ever pitched to networks.)
While NBC made a big talent deal with Cosby, 77, with an eye toward
developing the show, the network did not give a series commitment.
Werner brought in actor-writer
Mike O'Malley (the two were already working together on Starz's new sitcom
Survivor's Remorse) to pen a script and veteran producer
Mike Sikowitz to supervise the multi-camera show's creation.
The producers honed in on the idea of Cosby playing as the father of
three grown daughters, each in their own relationship. O'Malley would
play one of Cosby's sons-in-law, and
Tempestt Bledsoe (who played Vanessa Huxtable on
The Cosby Show)
was even approached to star as one of Cosby's daughters. (It's unclear
how far those talks went. Bledsoe had a deal with NBC stemming from her
role on the network's short-lived
Guys with Kids.)
"It's just a classic, big-extended-family sitcom," NBC Entertainment
president Jennifer Salke told reporters in July. Beyond that,
development was slow, and by the end of summer an expanded premise had
not been finalized. O'Malley was still busy with his Starz show,
Sikowitz was executive producing the new CBS comedy
The McCarthys
and Werner (a co-owner of the Boston Red Sox) spent the summer
preparing his case as a finalist to succeed Bud Selig as Major League
Baseball Commissioner. (He didn't get the job.)
Bill Cosby Rape Allegations: All The Latest News
Cosby's calendar was filled with stand-up dates, an exhibition of his
private collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art,
and his latest comedy special,
Bill Cosby 77, which was set to premiere on Netflix November 27.
Then, in mid-November, a few weeks after comedian
Hannibal Buress
called Cosby a rapist in a stand-up clip that went viral, a rash of
women came forward to accuse the comedian of sexually assaulting (and
sometimes drugging) them.
Why No One Should Be Surprised By the Bill Cosby Rape Allegations: A Timeline of His Bad Behavior
Some Hollywood executives appeared at first tone-deaf to the outcry.
But they shouldn't have been surprised. Cosby's alleged criminal
behavior has been the subject of media reports for at least a decade. In
2006, he settled out of court a civil assault case brought by Temple
University employee Andrea Constand before an assembled group of 13 more
women could testify against him. At press time, no fewer than 20 women
had made public allegations against Cosby. He was even described as a
"serial rapist" by one accuser, former model Jewel Allison. In the last
decade
People, Newsweek, and
Philadelphia magazines, as well as NBC's
Today, have all investigated the accusations.
"All of the ingredients were in the pan, they just needed a fire to
heat them up," says Ernest DelBuono, an executive in crisis management
at Washington, D.C.-based Levick public relations. "Up until September,
while all these accusations were out there, they were dormant. And he
was still getting requests to speak at graduations and events. Now it
has flamed up and there will always be the sentence in any story about
Bill Cosby regarding the accusations."
For anyone paying attention, Cosby's real-life persona never seemed to match the characters he played on TV. In a 1984
TV Guide Magazine cover story,
writer Kathleen Fury described the star as "combative, defensive,
challenging, threatening and hostile. The most innocuous line of
questioning could set him off."
What's most telling, director
Judd Apatow
recently tweeted, is how few in Hollywood are coming to Cosby's
defense. "I am saying his inner circle is not that surprised," Apatow
wrote. "People knew something bad was happening. For decades."
Bill Cosby Biographer Admits "I Was Wrong" to Ignore Rape Allegations
In a statement released November 20 by Carsey and Werner, the
producers expressed more shock than support. "The Bill we know was a
brilliant and wonderful collaborator on a show that changed the
landscape of television," they
wrote. "These recent news reports are beyond our knowledge or comprehension."
Even as the scandal heated up, NBC kept the new Cosby show on its
development slate. "Aren't these allegations over 30 years old now?" one
exec told us at the end of October. Clearly, he didn't expect the
number of charges to grow. One insider familiar with the proposed sitcom
says that NBC made its deal with Cosby because the network hoped to
capitalize on the goodwill left over from his days as America's dad, Dr.
Heathcliff Huxtable. Once that goodwill disappeared, there was no way
the series would happen. But NBC didn't have to do anything official to
end the project — it could have just faded away, like the majority of
scripts in development do. (In this case, there wasn't even a script
yet.) In NBC's mind, a public announcement would give the project too
much weight and make the network part of the story.
Netflix had a bigger dilemma: As the women began coming forward, it was just weeks away from premiering
Bill Cosby 77. Pulling
an already-produced special would be a financial hit. On November 13,
the streaming service told us the program was still launching as
planned. Five days later, as the story escalated, Netflix said it was
postponing the special.
Once Netflix pulled the plug, other programmers felt they had to
respond in the face of media scrutiny. On November 19, NBC confirmed
that its Cosby sitcom wasn't moving forward. TV Land pulled reruns of
The Cosby Show from its schedule and scrubbed any references to the show on its website.
Even without the scandal, Cosby's appeal was less obvious than it
used to be. Cosby's critique of young African-American culture has been
controversial (which, incidentally, led to Buress' comedy routine) and
millennials didn't grow up on
The Cosby Show, making him more of a curiosity than an icon among that demographic.
"I don't think [the NBC project] would have ever happened," says Jim
McKairnes, chair of Global Broadband and Telecommunications at Temple
University's School of Media and Communication. "Cosby is 14 years away
from his last series [CBS'
Cosby ended in 2000], which was not
successful. I'm not sure what the constituency for this show was, and I
don't think anybody in my classroom understands or gives a crap about
the Cosby legacy."
With the exception of
The Cosby Show, most of Cosby's other fare is hard to find on TV. As of this writing,
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
airs early weekend mornings on Bounce TV, a small digital network
geared toward African-Americans. Cosby's Nick Jr. animated preschool
series,
Little Bill,
ceased production in 2006 and hasn't aired since February. BET's
Centric channel continues to air the classic 1980s sitcom, which is also
available for streaming on Hulu Plus.
The furor has yet to make a huge impact on Cosby's wallet. He was
presumably paid for both the NBC deal and the Netflix special and has
made millions off
The Cosby Show, which, at the time it was
sold in the late 1980s, had the biggest syndication sale in history. But
now, the show is at such an advanced stage that residuals for Cosby and
the rest of the cast are likely small; while the TV Land income is
gone, they'll continue to get paid for the Centric and Hulu Plus
airings.
Where Cosby might get hit hardest is in touring revenue. He continued
to perform in recent weeks, even receiving a standing ovation at a
Florida show. Nonetheless, late November dates in Las Vegas and Yakima,
Washington, were canceled, and it's unclear whether his busy 2015
schedule will hold.
Crisis expert DelBuono says Cosby "will always be able to go to the
Bahamas or Erie, Pennsylvania, and pack the house." But, he adds, the
comic will likely never have the same level of success in TV, film or as
a corporate spokesman. "You can't put the genie back in the bottle."
Labels: Bill Cosby, NBC, Netflix, The Cosby Show, TV Land
