In a recent appearance on the Hate to Break It to Ya podcast, Raven-Symoné said she separates Bill Cosby’s influence on the television industry from his “horrifying” sexual assault allegations.
“Separate the creator from the creation,” she said. “And that’s exactly where I live. That creation changed America. It changed television.”
“He’s also been accused of some horrible things,” Simonet added. “That’s not an excuse, but it’s his personal (life). So personally you should keep it there and business-wise you should know what he did there. Like you said, both can live and I think our culture is right… Don’t do the wrong thing. Personally you can’t do the wrong thing. You just can’t do the wrong thing.”
Simone appeared on “The Cosby Show” alongside Cosby as Olivia Kendall from 1989 until the show ended in 1992. Cosby co-created the show in 1984 and starred as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable. “The Cosby Show” won six Emmy Awards and ran for 197 episodes.
Cosby first faced sexual assault allegations from Andrea Constand in 2004, but it wasn’t until 2014 that the accusations became widely known. In 2014, Barbara Bowman, who testified in support of Constand’s civil suit against Cosby, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Bill Cosby Raped Me. Why Did It Take 30 Years for People to Believe My Story?”
Over the next few years, dozens more women came forward with accusations against Cosby. In 2016, he was ordered to stand trial by Montgomery County Magistrate District Court on charges of sexual assault. The trial began in June 2017 and ended in a mistrial 12 days later.
Cosby was ultimately retried in 2018 and found guilty of three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced to three to 10 years in prison. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated Cosby’s conviction in 2021, citing a prior agreement he had made with Montgomery County Attorney Bruce Castor. The two agreed that Cosby would not be prosecuted if he provided testimony in Constand’s civil suit.
