Bill Cosby‘s TV wife Phylicia Rashad is backing away from statements she allegedly made to gossip columnist Roger Friedman.
Friedman quoted Rashad as saying “forget those women,” referring to the women who accused Cosby of drugging them and having his way with them.
In an interview with ABC News, Rashad said Friedman misquoted her.
“I am a woman. I would never say such a thing. I would never think such a thing,” she said emphatically.
But Rashad reiterated her support of Cosby in the face of heavy criticism.
“My message is, what happens to a nation in which people knowingly and willfully disavow the tenets that describe the nation?” she told ABC. “This is not about the women. This is about something else. This is about the obliteration of a legacy.”
In a statement on his Showbiz 411 blog, Friedman denied misquoting Rashad.
Let me clear something. I did not misquote Phylicia Rashad. But she didn’t mean for it to be taken the way it was, and I should have punctuated. There was NEVER the meaning in ‘Forget those women’ that she was saying to actually forget or dismiss then. She meant, ‘those women aside’– as in, she’s not talking about that, she’s talking about Cosby’s legacy being destroyed.
Rashad played lawyer, wife and mother Claire Huxtable in the long-running family TV sitcom The Cosby Show.
More from Sandrarose.com:
