Garcelle Beauvais is getting candid in her new book “Love Me As I Am.” The actress and star of “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” is opening up about her childhood and her journey to stardom, including a disturbing encounter she had with disgraced Hollywood figure Bill Cosby. The actor and comedian has been accused of sexually assaulting over five dozen women.
During a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s “Bevelations” with host Bevy Smith, Beauvais, who made an appearance on “The Cosby Show” in 1984, recalled the “eerie” feeling she experienced when she went to the show creator’s home.
”I felt like when I got to his brownstone that I wasn’t the only one there besides him. There was something eerie about not knowing if there’s anybody else in the house and then having, you know, him asking me if I wanna drink, and I wasn’t a drinker. So it was all those things,” the 55-year-old actress said via Yahoo Entertainment. Beauvais listened to her instincts, “And then something told me, ‘Get out of there.’ And that’s exactly what I did.”
In her book, Beauvais briefly explained why she chose to share her experience on the heels of the #MeToo movement, two years after Cosby was convicted of assaulting Andra Constand in 2004. However, last June, the conviction was overturned due to a technicality. Cosby has since maintained his innocence.
“You know, my kids were little [back then], and my divorce [from Mike Nilon was going on], I didn’t wanna drag them into it. And I felt like I didn’t have anything concrete,” Beauvais said of her 14-year-old twin sons she shares with Nilon, Jax, and Jaid, and her now-adult son Oliver whom she shares with ex-husband Daniel Saunders.
She added, “It would’ve been me just piling on, and I wouldn’t want people to think that, oh, I just wanted to be part of that and have my name out there. I included it in the book because it was a part, it was a part of listening to your gut.”
In her book, Beauvais also spoke about working with industry veteran Whoopi Goldberg while guest co-hosting “The View” in 2015, stating that she “was shocked and appalled to see how testy Whoopi was with the show’s producers.” She added, “I was embarrassed and disappointed, to say the least. It was cringeworthy!”
