NEW YORK – NBC became the second outlet to cancel projects with Bill Cosby only one day after another sexual assault allegation against the comic publicly emerged, involving famous model and well-known TV host Janice Dickinson.
NBC representative Rebecca Marks said Wednesday the project “is no longer under development,” and offered no further comment. The announcement came after Netflix announced late Tuesday that it was postponing the Nov. 27 premiere of a new Cosby standup comedy special.
Dickinson became the third woman in recent weeks to publicly allege she’d been assaulted by Bill Cosby when she told “Entertainment Tonight” on Tuesday that she was sexually assaulted by the comic in 1982. The crime allegedly took place in Lake Tahoe, California, where he was appearing.
She told the TV newsmagazine that she wrote about the assault in her 2002 autobiography, “No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel,” but that Cosby and his lawyers pressured her and the publisher to remove the details.
Cosby’s lawyer Martin Singer told The Wrap that Dickinson’s claim was an “outrageous defamatory lie.”
“Neither Mr. Cosby or any of his attorneys were ever told by Harper Collins that Ms. Dickinson had supposedly planned to write that he had sexually assaulted her, and neither Mr. Cosby or any of his representatives ever communication [sic] with the publisher about any alleged rape or sexual assault about the book,” Singer said.
In the “Entertainment Tonight” interview, Dickinson said she met Cosby at Lake Tahoe after his pressed her to do so. She contends that he said that he would help her with her singing career, an eery similarity to past allegations made by other women both publicly and privately. They had met earlier when her agent had introduced them, hoping that she could get a job on “The Cosby Show.”
Dickinson said that after dinner, she and Cosby were in her hotel room and that he gave her some red wine and a pill. She told “Entertainment Tonight” she had asked for a pill because she had been suffering stomach pains.
“The next morning I woke up and I wasn’t wearing my pajamas and I remembered before I passed out I had been sexually assaulted by this man,” she said. She said she remembered Cosby dropping the robe he had been wearing and getting on top of her, but that she never confronted Cosby about the incident.
Cosby, 77, who was never criminally charged in any case, settled a civil suit in 2006 with another woman over an alleged incident two years before.
Attention to the legendary entertainer’s past flared suddenly in recent weeks after another comic, Hannibal Buress, called Cosby a “rapist” during a Philadelphia performance. Two other women have emerged as accusers, including Barbara Bowman, who wrote an online Washington Post piece.
Another Cosby attorney, John P. Schmitt, issued a statement Sunday saying his client would not dignify “decade-old, discredited” claims of sexual abuse with a response. Schmitt later exempted the 2006 civil case from the blanket statement.
TMZ reported that Cosby was still set to perform shows at venues in the Bahamas, Florida and Las Vegas in the next few days. Several of the shows are sold-out.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
