Phylicia Rashad, who played Bill Cosby’s on-screen wife in “The Cosby Show,” said on Wednesday that reporters had misquoted her as saying “forget these women,” in reference to the women accusing the comedian of rape.
“That is a misquote, and that is not what I said,” she told ABC’s “World News Tonight” on Wednesday night.
“What I said was: This is not about the women,” Rashad continued. “This is about something else. This is about the obliteration of legacy.”
Entertainment site Showbizz411 originally quoted Rashad as saying “forget these women” in an interview published Tuesday. She was then quoted theorizing about the “orchestrated” effort to “destroy” Cosby’s legacy, in similar language to her remarks on ABC.
ABC asked about her reaction to the initial Cosby accusations from women saying that the comic drugged and raped several young women.
“I had never heard that before,” she responded. “I can’t even speak to those things and don’t want to.”
“What has happened is declaration in the media of guilt, without proof,” she said earlier in the interview.
Watch the interview, courtesy of ABC:
