Rise to Fame
I Spy (1965) made him the first Black actor to win a Primetime Emmy for Best Actor in a Drama Series, three years running. That wasn't even the peak. The Cosby Show debuted in 1984 and, according to TV Guide, almost single-handedly revived the sitcom genre and NBC's ratings. He played Cliff Huxtable for eight seasons as a kind of wish-fulfillment for anyone who wanted a stable, funny, well-off Black family on their TV screen. The country ate it up.
In the Spotlight
His 2018 conviction for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand was the first major celebrity criminal trial of the #MeToo era. He served nearly three years before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned it on due process grounds, citing a 2005 non-prosecution agreement a previous DA had made with him. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case in 2022. A civil jury still ordered him to pay $500,000 to Judy Huth that same year. More than 60 women have made accusations spanning decades. He walked out of prison free. Nobody in the industry treats him that way.
Side Notes
The 2004 'Pound Cake Speech' at the NAACP's 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board made national news: Cosby criticized Black youth for sagging pants, low-achieving names, and dropping out of school. He'd built a reputation as the voice of Black respectability for years. Constand later testified the assault on her happened that same year. He holds a doctorate in education from UMass Amherst, his dissertation a case for using Fat Albert as a classroom teaching tool. He made a career out of having opinions on other people's behavior.