Actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, famous for his role as Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, discussed the racial double standards in the media’s treatment of comedian Bill Cosby and white entertainers on The Real.
Warner — who is currently in a recurring role as A.C. Cowlings on the hit FX show The People v. O.J Simpson: American Crime Story — spoke candidly about the urgency to remove The Cosby Show from air. Doing so, he said, takes money from him and the other actors involved in the show.
“It’s literally taking money out of my pocket,” Warner said during an appearance on The Real. “So I got my own personal feelings about that, because it personally affects me.”
Cosby has been accused of drugging and raping numerous women, including model Beverly Johnson.
“There is no one that has been calling for Woody [Allen]’s movies to be pulled off the air,” Warner said. “Roman Polanski is still celebrated. Stephen Collins’ show still comes on. So it’s just interesting how it’s very unbalanced.”
The men Warner referred to have maintained their careers to a certain degree. Allen and Polanski still release films and are regarded as Hollywood stalwarts even though they have cases of rape and molestation in their past. Collins, who starred in 7th Heaven, admitted that he engaged in sexual misconduct with underage girls.
However, the insurmountable rape allegations against Cosby have made him guilty in the court of public opinion. Cosby’s side of the story has yet to be heard and many of his fans have doubts about the women’s claims.
Last October, Warner responded to an Ebony Magazine cover that put the entire cast of The Cosby Show in a negative light:
“[The cover is] contributing to the stereotypical image that society has of the broken Black family and the shattered Black family,” Warner said during an interview on HuffPost Live. “And to take something that … for 20 [or] 30 years has been what we have held up as the Black family that we all want to aspire to, in terms of the love that we don’t see when we see Black families in the media — to take that image and to shatter it, it’s disappointing to a lot of us.”
“I am in no position to defend him, because I can’t,” he said. “But nor will I throw him under the bus.”
Warner’s full statement is below:
Source: Youtube/The Real
