The Bill Cosby story used to be about the groundbreaking TV stardom in “I Spy,” the Grammy-winning comedy albums, the “Fat Albert” animated series, educational programming and the commercials, and then an entirely new level of superstardom with “The Cosby Show.”

In recent years, however, Cosby has been in the headlines not for his work, but because 60 women have come forward and accused him of sexual offenses that include drugging, groping and rape over a period of decades. In 2018, he was convicted of sexual assault, served nearly three years and was released in June 2021 when the conviction was overturned. In October of 2021, Lili Bernard filed a lawsuit alleging that Cosby drugged and raped her in 1990. Cosby has denied the accusations against him.

W. Kamau Bell thinks there’s more to be said, and his “We Need To Talk About Cosby” is a four-part docuseries that arrives on Showtime Jan. 28th. Influenced by Ezra Edelman’s “OJ: Made in America” and Dream Hampton’s “Surviving R. Kelly,” Bell’s powerful and provocative project seeks to make viewers examine Cosby’s entire legacy, from one of Black America’s moral leaders to a man convicted of sexual assault, and their own shifting perspectives as well as the power structures that enabled him for so long. 

The series features plenty of interviews, including women who have come forward to accuse Cosby of rape and sexual assault; Black comedians who grew up watching Cosby, co-workers of the onetime TV icon and more. But not everyone: The co-stars of “The Cosby Show,” among others, are noticeably absent.  

Bell says plenty of people just did not feel comfortable broaching the topic. “It’s a hornet’s nest to talk about Cosby even if you think you’re on the right side,” he said in a recent video interview. “There are people who think you’re on the wrong side or who think they’re on the more right side than you, that you’re not going far enough. And some women did not feel safe, from verbal attacks or physical threats, if they went against Cosby on camera.” 

The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. Were you looking to tell your own story about your unresolved feelings?

I didn’t want it to be “Cosby and Me” – like “Roger and Me.” The series naturally includes my personal feelings but it’s not about my personal journey. 

It did not start out with me narrating, but then the number of people who said yes to interviews was dwarfed by the people who said no. And Covid also shut us down for several months. So it becomes, “How do we get these arguments in or address these points?” 

Showtime said, “You have to be in there with us.” My story was a stand-in for a lot of Black people, especially those who are my age or older. In the end, the show was like a “Chopped” challenge: these are the ingredients you have and you have to make something. It settled me down to think of it that way.

Q. Were you telling the story from a general perspective or specifically a Black perspective?

It was always going to be a Black story because it was made by me; a White filmmaker may not have said we need to talk about the segment of Black folks who believed the conspiracy that this all happened because he was attempting to buy NBC and so NBC took him down. 

The germ of my idea started when the Hannibal Buress video went viral and then women started coming forward – I read an article about Nonie Robinson making a film about Cosby’s role in integrating the stunt industry. I’d never heard that story that he was regarded as the key figure in getting Black stunt performers work. She pulled his interview because of the accusations. I believe he did these things to these women, but we can’t lose this history and it felt sad not to hear the stunt people’s stories because of him. So I included that, too.

Q. Were you worried that showing Cosby’s speeches attacking Black culture and lecturing young Black men would sidetrack us from his most monstrous behavior? Or did that arrogance and hypocrisy go hand in hand?

That’s another thing I may have done differently because I’m a Black filmmaker because that’s part of my journey with Cosby: He’s my hero, he’s the best comedian ever, he’s doing good work in the world. He’s yelling at Black people? Why is he yelling at Black people? Wait, and he’s raping women? 

Cosby’s hypocrisy was part of Hannibal’s original joke. Those rapes are bad but also you’re yelling at us to pull up our pants and you turned that into a new career. Some Black people liked his NAACP speech on those subjects but a lot of us felt betrayed. And then came the next betrayal.

Q. You give plenty of space to all of Cosby’s positive influences on America and specifically on Black life in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, yet you never go too long without letting the women tell their stories, unadorned and at their own pace.

In the beginning of the O.J. Simpson series, it’s made clear you are talking about a guy who many people believe murdered two people, and yet 15 minutes in you’re watching football highlights saying, “Man, he was fast.”

And I remember watching “Surviving R. Kelly” and its goal was, “Whatever your opinion is, just listen to these stories and sit through this discomfort.” 

That was a touchstone. 

So that became important to my film. We sometimes soft-sell this stuff or edit it down to the sound bites. Those women’s stories exist longer than I think they would exist in most films. There was talk of recreations and I said no. We didn’t dress the women’s scenes up with a lot of music. No, no, no: Look at these women and listen to these stories. 

Q. You show a clip from 2014 of Jerry Seinfeld saying he can still watch Cosby’s comedy and Stephen Colbert strongly disagreeing, saying he can’t separate the two. Do you hope this series shifts people from the Seinfeld camp to the Colbert camp? 

Seinfeld may have a different opinion now. He’s just a stand-in for a lot of us who were in that same place then. What’s so interesting is the idea that he hadn’t reckoned with it at all and he’s sort of starting right there. 

I don’t think those are the only two camps. You can do whatever you want to do but you must reckon with the reality of what you’re doing, especially when you take that into the outside world. 

The key is we should learn to create a world that is safer for people so we don’t have to reckon with this so often.

Q. Some of the men you interviewed still seem unable to completely walk away, saying Cosby was good to them and they still love him. What does that say about where we’re at?

It reveals that this is still an active discussion. I was really happy to have the moments like when Chris Spencer says, “I didn’t believe none of those women until a woman I knew revealed that it happened to her.” 

We have to leave space for everyone coming to it a different way; it doesn’t mean they’re not allies or don’t want to create a safer world. 

Q. Did people just think he was a relentless womanizer or do you think people knew what was really happening and were turning a blind eye?

There’s a culture of hedonism in show business. So it’s easy for some people to say, “It’s just infidelity,” just men enjoying the spoils of success – if you’re shocked by infidelity in show business, you should get out of show business. The more powerful you are the more privileges you have. Maybe that’s more women than you’ve seen go to a man’s dressing room but it’s not breaking news. 

You also have to think about the hierarchy of power in show business, there’s a culture of, “Put your head down and ignore things that don’t have to do with your immediate job.”

But I think there’s a level above that of people who were specifically employed to help keep the secret. There’s a line that one of the women he raped during “The Cosby Show” says, “Do not edit this: A lot of people knew. Because you can’t do what he did unless you have other people supporting what you’re doing.”

I believe that. More people knew than we think, and some were at the highest levels of power. 

Bill Cosby is a vehicle for conversation but not the whole conversation. When they built showbiz, they didn’t say, “Where do we put the HR department” and comedy clubs didn’t say, “Before you come to work this week here’s paperwork to go over about what your behavior should and shouldn’t be like. And sign here.”

Show business was built without safety measures. Now the people in power have the duty to create more safety measures. 

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