Comeback by Cosby Unravels as Rape Claims Re-emerge

In the twilight of a long and celebrated career, Bill Cosby was experiencing the kind of comeback few longtime performers enjoy.

A new biography described his life and accomplishments in show business. A stand-up comedy special on Netflix, commemorating his 77th birthday, was scheduled for next week. His collection of African American art became part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian this month. And NBC was exploring a project that would bring him back to the network's prime-time lineup, where in the 1980s he became America's pre-eminent television star with "The Cosby Show."

But in recent weeks, his triumphant return to the national stage has fallen apart in the face of a wave of accusations by women who say Cosby drugged and raped them decades ago. On Wednesday, NBC said it was canceling the pilot project, and the cable network TV Land quietly decided to stop showing repeats of "The Cosby Show." Less than 24 hours earlier, Netflix said it was postponing the debut of the comedy special. Other scheduled appearances by Cosby - on David Letterman's late-night show and Queen Latifah's daytime talk show - have also been canceled.

Cosby's lawyers have vigorously denied the accusations in recent days, and he has never faced criminal charges. But the troubles have put the star's comeback in limbo and created awkward situations as he seeks to burnish his legacy. Cosby's handlers, for instance, realizing that Letterman would have to ask Cosby about the rape claims, decided to scrap his appearance.

The accusations against Cosby have been all the more striking because his hit TV show, his commercials for Jell-O and his best-selling books about fatherhood helped him present an image of the ideal family man.

A series of suddenly converging factors contributed to tearing down that image. That included a viral video of an emerging comedian, Hannibal Buress, who bluntly called Cosby a rapist in his act, and an ill-conceived effort to solicit positive comments about Cosby on an Internet meme, which inspired a chorus of contributors to call him a rapist. In the meantime, four women have come forward publicly in recent days to repeat the decades-old accusations of rape.

The reach of the Web and the impact of social media have provided a distribution platform for these accusations, which had surfaced before but never gained widespread traction.

Martin Kaplan, the Norman Lear chairman in entertainment, media and society at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, said a combination of social media and Cosby's return to the spotlight had propelled the story to much greater prominence than when the accusations surfaced in the past.

"The fact that he was already in the public spotlight - the book, the potential deal with NBC and so on - and the fact that these charges have a much more powerful amplifier and echo chamber, it gives people the sense that this is a big story," he said.

The current furor surrounding Cosby had their root in accusations brought in 2005 by Andrea Constand, a female staff member with the basketball team at Temple University, Cosby's alma mater. She said she had been drugged and raped by Cosby. The district attorney in Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, Bruce L. Castor Jr, said in an interview Wednesday that he did not feel he had enough evidence to pursue a criminal case at the time, "despite the fact that I thought Cosby was guilty of some improper behavior - my gut told me that."

A subsequent civil lawsuit brought by Constand promised to present testimony from 13 "Jane Does" with similar accounts of sexual assault. Cosby's lawyer called the claims false and even preposterous; the suit was settled for an undisclosed sum in 2006.

One of  the unnamed women in the suit, Barbara Bowman, a former actress, came forward publicly last week in The Washington Post to describe her experiences in detail, saying she was drugged and raped by Cosby in the 1980s. But women had been describing similar episodes with Cosby in the nine years since the suit was settled. Bowman spoke about her charges to Philadelphia magazine and People magazine in 2006. Newsweek magazine had interviews with both Bowman and another Cosby accuser, Tamara Green, this past February without setting off the whirlwind of attention that has surrounded Cosby in the past two weeks.

But Cosby's career was not ascendant at the time.

Mark Whitaker, the author of the biography that contributed to the controversy - partly because Whitaker did not address the rape charges in the book - said Cosby's revived career had thrust him back into national attention again.

"He was not hiding," Whitaker said. "He was on the road doing 60 concerts a year. But in terms of visibility, he was doing things he had not done in quite a while."

Whitaker, the former top editor at Newsweek, cited events surrounding the 30th anniversary of "The Cosby Show," the 50th anniversary of the start of Cosby's career, and two stand-up concert films Cosby had planned. Then he agreed to try to go back to prime time on NBC.

"He was putting himself out there," Whitaker said.

Whitaker said he did not address the accusations in his book because he could not verify them.

If the comeback brought Cosby the adulation of his fans, it also revived the outrage of his accusers. In addition to Bowman, a writer named Joan Tarshis came forward for the first time to tell a story of being drugged and raped on two occasions in 1969.

"I had wanted to get it off my chest for a long time," Tarshis said in a telephone interview. "When I was approached by tabloids in 2005, a tabloid was not the way I wanted to go." The piece by Bowman inspired her to finally speak out, she said.

Janice Dickinson, a well-known former model, added her name to the list of accusers, saying Cosby brought her to Lake Tahoe in 1982 and drugged and raped her. That charge has drawn the most virulent response; a lawyer for Cosby, Martin Singer, called Dickinson's claim a "fabricated lie."

Another of Cosby's lawyers, John P. Schmitt, earlier had made a blanket denial of the charges by the women as "old and discredited."

In some states, for serious sexual crimes, prosecutions would still be timely. But Benjamin Brafman, an experienced criminal defense lawyer who represented Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said there would be serious obstacles to making any criminal case against Cosby at this stage because of the passage of time and the lack of forensic evidence.

The end of the prospective new project with NBC may be the most painful development for the comedian. Several people with knowledge of the project said it originated when Cosby approached the network with an idea to return to weekly situation comedy. A deal like that would almost surely include a penalty payment to the comic if the project was terminated early.

NBC was excited enough about the prospect that it announced the project to the news media in July, very early in the process. By all accounts, the decision to drop it now was influenced by the news swirling around Cosby.

Many other stars have bounced back from accusations that damaged their reputation, but Cosby may find that challenging. The harsh judgment of social media will be difficult to overcome said Kaplan, of the University of Southern California.

"Social media is many things, among them it gives people a belief of what people are talking about," he said, "which is something larger than what they see on television or read in the papers."