In his recent Showtime docuseries “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” W. Kamau Bell confronts the complicated legacy of the disgraced comedian. Bill Cosby, once one of the most popular…
In his recent Showtime docuseries “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” W. Kamau Bell confronts the complicated legacy of the disgraced comedian. Bill Cosby, once one of the most popular comics of all time and an icon for Black Americans, was accused of sexual assault by 60 women. In the doc, Bell speaks to many of his survivors and people who have worked with Cosby in an attempt to determine whether his cultural impact can truly be separated from his various crimes.
“I was born in the Bill Cosby Universe, there was no pre-Bill Cosby for me,” Bell said at Variety and Rolling Stone’s Truth Seekers Summit presented by Showtime Documentary Films. “I’m in the generation of people where many of us understand, accept and believe that he raped and sexually assaulted these women, but I don’t know how to separate from the influence that he had on my life.”
Bell spoke to Rolling Stone news director Jason Newman in a keynote conversation for Truth Seekers. Over the course of their 30-minute discussion, Bell talked about diving into the Cosby case, what inspired him to make the documentary and painting a complicated portrait of a man that played such an important part in Black culture.
Talking about the documentary, which received three nominations at the Primetime Emmy awards including best documentary or nonfiction series, Kamau said he took inspiration from “OJ: Made in America” and “Surviving R. Kelly” in how he approached working with survivors and telling a broader story through the lens of the famous star. Originally, Bell wasn’t intending to insert himself into the doc but instead take a backseat for the stories and voices of the interviewees. But several producers, friends and his wife encouraged him to play a bigger role, leading to his narration throughout the documentary about his personal feelings toward Cosby’s legacy.
“I had to then submit to letting people know that I’m not just an omniscient narrator, I’m actually a person who thins this,” Bell said about the narration. “In no work I do am I trying to both-sides anything… the doc was always going to have an opinion whether I narrated or not. It was always going to affirm the belief that he did these crimes.”
The Truth Seekers Summit took place on Aug. 25. “We Need to Talk About Cosby” can be streamed on Showtime. Watch the full conversation above.
