00:00 I have a little story for you.
00:01 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at celebrities who made written or vocal statements
00:07 about Bill Cosby prior to the expansive media coverage of the scandal.
00:12 This is not greed.
00:14 This is a day of reckoning.
00:15 This is not greed.
00:17 This is accountability.
00:20 Wendy Williams.
00:21 Well, known far and wide for The Wendy Williams Show, Williams was once a prominent shock
00:28 DJ.
00:29 She found work on WRKS and hosted a segment called Dish the Dirt in which she would gossip
00:34 about celebrities.
00:36 Once upon a time, I worked at a radio station here in New York called 98.7 Kiss.
00:41 One of her targets was Bill Cosby.
00:43 The National Enquirer had published a not so nice story about Cosby, and Williams discussed
00:49 the allegations on air.
00:51 So I dust the article off, and I talk about it in my Dish the Dirt segment, you know,
00:57 with the Wake Up Club.
00:58 Cosby got wind of the segment and reportedly phoned the station himself, demanding that
01:02 Williams be fired.
01:04 This was all the way back in 1990, a good 25 years before the scandal toppled the famous
01:10 comedian.
01:11 Cosby's on the speakerphone.
01:12 Cosby dressed me down and called me everything but a daughter of God.
01:17 Now that's my own personal account with these allegations.
01:20 Unfortunately, Williams' warnings were not heeded.
01:24 She wasn't fired, but the intervention from Cosby was enough to kill the story in its
01:29 tracks.
01:30 Charlotte Laws You may know this celebrity by her stage name,
01:34 Missy Laws.
01:35 Laws has many different jobs, but her most prominent work was with BBC News, where she
01:41 acted as a contributor.
01:52 She also worked with KNBC-TV, serving as a weekly commentator on their program, The Filter
01:58 with Fred Rogan.
02:00 In November of 2014, Laws wrote an article for Salon titled, "Bill Cosby and Drugging,
02:06 My 34-Year-Old Secrets."
02:08 I didn't even think about coming forward until 2005 because I didn't think there was anything
02:15 to come forward about.
02:17 In the article, Laws claims that Cosby drugged her friend back in 1981.
02:21 This piece was widely read and landed Laws on shows like Dr. Drew and Fox News.
02:27 In the latter interview, Laws suggested that Cosby has somnophilia, or a sexual attraction
02:33 to unconscious people.
02:39 In September of 1963, aspiring actress Victoria Valentino was named the Playboy Playmate of
02:45 the Month.
02:46 Six years later, she was allegedly assaulted by Bill Cosby, who had recently released his
02:51 album To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With.
02:58 According to Valentino, Cosby took her and a friend out to a dinner and gave them each
03:03 a pill.
03:14 He then took the drugged women to his house and engaged in acts of sexual assault.
03:19 Valentino reportedly told this story in a 1996 exposé on Playboy models, but the interview
03:25 was never published.
03:26 Valentino sued Cosby in 2023 after California abolished the statute of limitations for sexual
03:33 abuse.
03:45 Before finding work as a journalist, Joan Tarshish was an aspiring actress and comedy
03:50 writer working in Hollywood.
03:52 She met Bill Cosby in 1969, the same year that he allegedly assaulted Victoria Valentino.
04:10 Cosby abused Tarshish on two separate occasions.
04:14 Once at his personal bungalow and again in a New York City hotel.
04:22 About ten years later, Tarshish approached a freelance reporter named John Milward and
04:26 told him about the sexual assaults that she had experienced at the hands of Cosby.
04:31 However, Milward decided against publishing the story and Tarshish's experience went unheard.
04:42 What's next?
05:02 Hannibal Buress Someone had to open the floodgates and that
05:06 someone was comedian Hannibal Buress.
05:16 As we've learned, Bill Cosby's history of sexual abuse was an open Hollywood secret,
05:21 with reports even making it as far as the National Enquirer.
05:25 But nothing was done about it until Buress joked about Cosby's skeevy past during a
05:29 stand-up routine in Philadelphia.
05:49 The resulting media attention turned the cultural spotlight on to Cosby's history of sexual
05:53 assault and kick-started his eventual downfall.
06:03 It also encouraged many other celebrities to come forth with their own unfortunate stories,
06:08 including Janis Dickinson, Louisa Moritz, and Michelle Hurd.
06:20 Here's what's next!
06:29 (upbeat music)
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