“There are a million reasons we don’t want what we know to be true about Bill Cosby to be true,” says SCU English Professor Danielle Morgan, who wrote a book on African American satire and comedy. “But the reality is the reality.”
Morgan was interviewed for the documentary miniseries, We Need to Talk About Cosby, which premiered on Showtime in late January 2022 to rave reviews. TV host and stand-up comic W. Kamau Bell directed and produced the series, which explores how we talk and feel about Bill Cosby, the man behind the groundbreaking, stereotype-shattering 1980s show that put a Black family front and center on television sets across America, now that the same man was charged with dozens of sexual assaults.
The series does not attempt to definitively answer whether it’s possible to separate the art from the artist but allows us space to talk about it.