A TV comedy Bill Cosby had been developing for NBC has been canceled, after new allegations of rape have been made against the comedian. Netflix made a similar move late Tuesday, shelving a comedy special that had been slated to premiere the week of Thanksgiving.
Cosby, 77, has not publicly addressed the claims against him, which have now been made publicly by at least six women. In an NPR interview that aired over the weekend, Cosby refused to discuss the allegations.
Marty Singer, Cosby's attorney, has said the comedian did nothing wrong. Responding to former model Janice Dickinson's claim that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her, Singer called the story an "outrageous defamatory lie." In a letter to website The Wrap, Singer said the version of events Dickinson relayed this week doesn't match what she wrote about the encounter in a memoir.
Dickinson spoke to Entertainment Weekly several days after former actress Barbara Bowman wrote in last Friday's Washington Post, "Cosby had drugged and raped me, too."
As NPR's Eric Deggans wrote this week, "several recent events, including the 30th anniversary of The Cosby Show and the publication of the biography, have pushed media to reconsider Cosby's legacy."
Discussing the comedian's "huge, complicated" legacy, NPR's Gene Demby wrote in September:
"Cosby's renown has become less neat in the years since the show went off the air, his squeaky-clean family image tarnished by confessions of infidelity and allegations of sexual assault. His politics have become polarizing, and his name is invoked as a shorthand for a specific strain of black conservatism."
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