Bill Cosby Documentary Analyses Complicated Downfall

Bill Cosby Documentary Analyses Complicated Downfall

Showtime’s four-part documentary We Need to Talk About Cosby premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 22 and looks at the comedian from all different angles. It includes interviews from some who considered Cosby to be a friend,others who worked with him and and several who allege he assaulted them.

Several years after disturbing sexual assault allegations first surfaced against Bill Cosby, from a Hannibal Buress joke in 2014 about Bill Cosby being a rapist. We are still grappling with the reality. The once idolised comedian & pioneer in television is not the pillar of morality people believed him to be. Putting all these Cosby’s together America’s dad, the scold of black people, and a person accused of sexual assault and rape. When we put them in one package we are wrestling with what does that mean for all this good feeling i once had for Bill Cosby?

Directed by Emmy-winning comic and TV host W. Kamau Bell of United Shades of America, Showtime’s new documentary series — We Need To Talk About Cosby — explores just that.

“Bill Cosby had been one of my heroes,” Bell narrates in a new trailer for the show. “I’m a Black man, a stand-up comic, I was born in the ’70s. But this… this was complicated,” he adds, referring to the harrowing information brought to light by numerous Cosby accusers.

“How do we talk about Bill Cosby?” – Bill Cosby Documentary

To answer his own question, Bell speaks with a lineup of Cosby survivors, cultural commentators, journalists and comedians.

Four episodes complete the interviews. They address the complicated process of changing your opinion on a man firmly rooted in American culture. (Watch the docuseries trailer below.)

The chronicle of his career and downfall reaches mass audiences on Sunday, Jan. 30. All four episodes available on Showtime.