‘We Need To Talk About Cosby’ Director W. Kamau Bell On What Shocked Him Most About Bill Cosby Story – Deadline Virtual House:

Bill Cosby has dismissed W. Kamau Bell, director of the Showtime documentary series We Need to Talk About Cosby, as a “PR hack.” But The Cosby Show star and accused serial rapist appears to be in a small minority. No less an institution than the New York Times has declared Bell’s series “a model of how to engage honestly with disgraced artists and their art.”

In his four-part Emmy-contending series, Bell examines Cosby’s entertainment industry accomplishments and powerful impact on American culture, while confronting head on allegations from dozens of women that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them. Cosby’s alleged string of sexual assaults continued over a period of decades, beginning in the 1960s.

“I didn’t know until I started studying this that it went back to so early in his career to before he was really even a super famous comedian, before he was really very known,” Bell said as he appeared on a Deadline Virtual House panel to discuss his series. “I think that’s one of the things that is shocking about it.”

Bell interviewed numerous Cosby accusers, including Lili Bernard, an African American actress who guest-starred on an episode of The Cosby Show in the early 1990s. Appearing on the panel with Bell, Bernard spoke of the vicious backlash she has faced for coming forward with her allegations.

“As a Black survivor of Bill Cosby, speaking out comes with an extra burden, because we as Black women are enculturated to protect the Black male image,” Bernard said. “Society is invested in uplifting the Black male image that is denigrated in the media. And so it is against the status quo for the Black community in general to speak out against Black male perpetrators. It saddens me to say that the demographic of people who have attacked me and blamed and shamed me the most are Black men… To have someone as brave and courageous and compassionate and respected as Kamau, to give credence to our voices in such a very objective way, is just life changing.”

Bell has earned three Emmys for his work on the CNN nonfiction series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell. In We Need to Talk About Cosby, he acknowledges a degree of anguish about taking on an icon like Cosby, because he grew up a fan of the comedian’s work, including his children’s cartoon show Fat Albert. But he says it was the testimony of Cosby accusers that motivated him to persevere.

“They’re all asked to tell their stories quite often,” Bell noted. “Their stories have been reduced to soundbites. And because many of them said they knew my work, they trusted me to sort of get a different take on this that would honor them. And so for me, that was the thing that kept me going.”

Cosby has been out of prison for about a year, freed after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out his 2018 conviction for aggravated indecent assault, ruling Cosby’s rights under the 5th and 14th amendments to the Constitution had been violated. The comedian still faces civil actions from Bernard and other accusers; he has consistently denied their allegations.

The series runs a total of 237 minutes. Producer Katie A. King said even at that length, it wasn’t easy to unspool the narrative in all its nuance.

“The challenge at the end was like, how do we fit it all in? Because there was just so much story to tell, so many decades of story to tell, so much that’s happened,” King said. “We were shooting when he – surprise — gets out of prison and we’re like, Oh God. Like, now we have even more story to tell. And it felt even more urgent and scary for a lot of us that he’s now free.”

King added, “We had a big team on this too, and everyone kind of added in their perspectives and insight. We are all proud of how it ended up.”

Watch the conversation in the video above.

View this article at Deadline.