Celebs Who Tried to Warn Us About Bill Cosby...

Celebs Who Tried to Warn Us About Bill Cosby

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at celebrities who made written or vocal statements about Bill Cosby prior to the expansive media coverage of the scandal.

Wendy Williams

While known far and wide for “The Wendy Williams Show,” Williams was once a prominent shock DJ. She found work on WRKS and hosted a segment called “Dish the Dirt” in which she would gossip about celebrities. One of her targets was Bill Cosby. The National Enquirer had published a not-so-nice story about Cosby, and Williams discussed the allegations on air. Cosby got wind of the segment and reportedly phoned the station himself, demanding that Williams be fired. This was all the way back in 1990, a good 25 years before the scandal toppled the famous comedian. Unfortunately, Williams’ warnings were not heeded. She wasn’t fired, but the intervention from Cosby was enough to kill the story in its tracks.

Charlotte Laws

You may know this celebrity by her stage name, Missy Laws. Charlotte Laws has many different jobs, but her most prominent work was with BBC News, where she acted as a contributor. She also worked with KNBC-TV, serving as a weekly commentator on their program “The Filter with Fred Roggin.” In November of 2014, Laws wrote an article for Salon titled “Bill Cosby and drugging: My 34-year-old secret.” In the article, Laws claims that Cosby drugged her friend back in 1981. This piece was widely read and landed Laws on shows like “Dr. Drew” and Fox News. In the latter interview, Laws suggested that Cosby has somnophilia, or a sexual attraction to unconscious people.

Victoria Valentino

In September of 1963, aspiring actress Victoria Valentino was named the Playboy Playmate of the Month. Six years later, she was allegedly assaulted by Bill Cosby, who had recently released his album “To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With.” According to Valentino, Cosby took her and a friend out to dinner and gave them each a pill. He then took the drugged women to his house and engaged in acts of sexual assault. Valentino reportedly told this story in a 1996 exposé on Playboy models, but the interview was never published. Valentino sued Cosby in 2023 after California abolished the statute of limitations for sexual abuse.

Joan Tarshis

Before finding work as a journalist, Joan Tarshis was an aspiring actress and comedy writer working in Hollywood. She met Bill Cosby in 1969, the same year that he allegedly assaulted Victoria Valentino. Cosby abused Tarshis on two separate occasions - once at his personal bungalow and again in a New York City hotel. About ten years later, Tarshis approached a freelance reporter named John Milward and told him about the sexual assaults that she had experienced at the hands of Cosby. However, Milward decided against publishing the story, and Tarshis’s experience went unheard.

Hannibal Buress

Well, someone had to open the floodgates, and that someone was comedian Hannibal Buress. As we’ve learned, Bill Cosby’s history of sexual abuse was an open Hollywood secret, with reports even making it as far as the National Enquirer. But nothing was done about it until Buress joked about Cosby’s skeevy past during a stand-up routine in Philadelphia. The resulting media attention turned the cultural spotlight onto Cosby’s history of sexual assault and kickstarted his eventual downfall. It also encouraged many other celebrities to come forth with their own unfortunate stories, including Janice Dickinson, Louisa Moritz, and Michelle Hurd.