Bill Cosby comedy scrapped amid new sex assault allegations
Comedian's new sitcom 'is no longer under development,' said NBC spokeswoman
NBC says it has scrapped a Bill Cosby comedy that was under development, the second outlet within a day to put off or abandon a Cosby project as another sexual assault allegation against the comic has emerged.
NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks said Wednesday the project "is no longer under development," and had no further comment.
A representative from the Comedy Network also confirmed to CBC News Wednesday that the special Bill Cosby: Far from Finished that was scheduled to air Nov. 30 will no longer air. There are no plans to air it at a later date.
The announcements come after Netflix announced late Tuesday that it was postponing the Nov. 27 premiere of a new Cosby standup comedy special.
New allegations emerge
Actress Janice Dickinson became the third woman in recent weeks to allege she'd been assaulted by Cosby when she told Entertainment Tonight Tuesday that she was sexually assaulted by the comic in 1982.
Dickinson said that after dinner, she and Cosby were in her hotel room and that he gave her some red wine and a pill. She told Entertainment Tonight she had asked for a pill because she had been suffering stomach pains.
"The next morning I woke up and I wasn't wearing my pyjamas and I remembered before I passed out I had been sexually assaulted by this man," she said. She said she remembered Cosby dropping the robe he had been wearing and getting on top of her.
She said she never confronted Cosby about the incident.
"I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do and this happened to me and this is a true story," she said.
The 57-year-old former model also told the show that she wrote about the assault in her 2002 autobiography, No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel, but that Cosby and his lawyers pressured her and the publisher to remove the details.
Dickinson 'lying about Bill Cosby'
Bill Cosby's lawyer insists that Janice Dickinson is making it all up.
"There is documentary proof that Janice Dickinson is fabricating and lying about Bill Cosby."
"The only story she gave 12 years ago in her autobiography as well as her interview with the media was that she refused to sleep with Mr. Cosby and he blew her off," he said. "You can confirm with Harper Collins that she never claimed Mr. Cosby raped her, that no attorney representing Bill Cosby tried to kill the story (since there was no such story) and no one tried to prevent anything she wanted to say about Bill Cosby in her book."
In the memoir, Dickinson described stopping herself at his hotel room door when he invited her in after dinner, claiming exhaustion.
"After all I've done for you, that's what I get? 'I'm exhausted,'' Dickinson quoted Cosby as saying. He then "gave me the dirtiest, meanest look in the world, stepped into his suite, and slammed the door in my face," she wrote.
Spiralling scandal
Cosby, 77, who was never criminally charged in any case, settled a civil suit in 2006 with another woman over an alleged incident two years before.
Attention to the legendary entertainer's past flared suddenly in recent weeks after another comic, Hannibal Buress, called Cosby a "rapist" during a Philadelphia performance. Two other women have emerged as accusers, including Barbara Bowman, who wrote an online Washington Post piece.
Cosby himself has remained silent, and his lawyer, John P. Schmitt, issued a statement Sunday saying his client would not dignify "decade-old, discredited" claims of sexual abuse with a response. Schmitt later exempted the 2006 civil case from the blanket statement.
With files from CBC News