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What do you think of when you hear the name Bill Cosby? Anita Hill speaks with W. Kamau Bell, the creator of the new documentary series, “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” about how to have difficult conversations, like the one in Bell’s film which reckons with Cosby’s achievements as well as his transgressions and the lasting effects.
Anita Hill
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W. Kamau Bell
As a black man in America who grew up through this, we need to talk about Bill Cosby.
Anita Hill
That's filmmaker and comedian W. Kamau Bell, who recently released the documentary series We Need to Talk About Cosby. For, Bell who is drawn to challenging conversations. This was a conversation that had to happen.
W. Kamau Bell
This series comes out of the fact that as a black kid who was born in the early seventies who grew up in an America where Bill Cosby was part of the wallpaper of Black America, and I was right there every week wanting to be one of the Huxtables, I just sort of thought in some sense that I was walking in the path that Bill Cosby had created and to try to aspire to be like him, to be a comedian who is funny but also does good in the world, who is intelligent but also silly and helps pull other people along who may not be pulled along otherwise.
Anita Hill
And then the 60 women came forward.
W. Kamau Bell
Then I was wrestling with, how does all this make sense? Because they seem to be such disparate truths. And so the documentary is just me inviting people to have that conversation about how do we make sense of all of this? And it's not a conversation lots of people want to have, more people said no than yes. But the people who showed up really showed up, including many of the survivors. Bill Cosby is the Trojan horse for having the bigger conversation about rape culture in America.
Anita Hill
I'm Anita Hill. This is Getting Even, my podcast about equality and what it takes to get there. On Getting Even, I speak with people who are improving our imperfect world, people who took risks and broke the rules. In this episode, W. Kamau Bell and I discuss the importance of having hard conversations, the kind of conversations that move us forward as a society and how Bell's documentary We Need to Talk About Cosby accomplishes exactly that.
Tell us about your series, it's title, We Need to Talk, who's the "we?"
W. Kamau Bell
That's funny. I see the "we" as people who see that title and go, oh yeah, we do. I think it's one of those things that you opt into it if it resonates with you. I've seen many people go, I don't need to talk about Cosby. And I'm like, well, good. There's lots of other TV for you to watch. But I think for me, when we released the trailer and the title to see many people go, finally, we're going to have this discussion. And I think we were very clear about we're going to talk about all of it, career and the crimes. And to see a lot of people go, I've been wanting to have this conversation, but not knowing where to have it at the core because I'm a black man. Black people are the core part of this conversation because his effect on us is very different than the effect on the greater world.
But certainly the Cosby Show was not just the biggest show in black America. It was the biggest show in America. So a lot of people who are not black also are defined by that "we." There's also a generational divide here. I think if you're under the age of 35, maybe you're like, I don't understand what we need to talk about. I get it. He's a criminal who raped a lot of people. I don't know what we need to talk about and I've seen some of that. But I think there is, if you were my generation, was a Gen X, or the baby boomers, you came up sort of admiring this man. And so I really do think that part of this is a generational conversation.
Anita Hill
And generational conversations are really, really difficult to translate sometimes.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes.
Anita Hill
But you are letting the public into your conversation, your way of making sense out of the whole episode and the scandal that is whirling around Bill Cosby now. Who do you think should hear this conversation?
W. Kamau Bell
I mean, a big part of this is about really examining rape culture in America and not all of that is crime. A lot of that is things that are quote unquote "jokes" or ways in which we talk about sexual assault and rape, but also ways in which we have been acculturated to treat women at the workplace. I sort of came of age in the nineties when a lot of these conversations started to happen when we started to, think about, specifically related to you, the Clarence Thomas Case.
I was a teenager who was trying to understand what was going on and not really able to have that conversation yet. I think about the Mike Tyson case and times in my life when it's like I have been sort of acculturated, not by my mom, but by rape culture overall to sort of ask those, well what was she doing there? Why would she say that? Why can't you make that joke? Why are people being so sensitive? And then luckily I grew out of that. And so for me, a part of this is we still haven't figured out how pervasive rape culture is in this country and how damaging it can be where then a woman says she's been raped or sexually assaulted, that many of us immediately go, well, what was she doing there? Instead of going, how can we help you? How can we heal you? How can we get you some justice?
Anita Hill
Did you think your role as a father influenced your desire to explore this topic?
W. Kamau Bell
Yeah, I think that for me... I have three daughters. When my wife got pregnant with our first kid, I wasn't one of those men who was like, I need a boy because we need to play football. I didn't play football as a kid, so I didn't know... I was just happy that the child was healthy. But then when my oldest daughter was born and we started hanging out and I saw her personality and Melissa got pregnant again, I was like, I want another one of these. I want another girl. We ended up having three girls and I was sort of always aware, and I would joke about this, that my role was to be a double agent, to tell them this is what men are doing, this is what men are saying, this is how you have to be prepared. So I think that yes, being a father has affected me, definitely being a father of three girls. But when I'm doing the work on the series, I'm not doing that thing where it's like, as a father of three girls, we need to talk about Cosby. I'm very careful to not use my daughters as props for becoming a better person. I think I want to be a better person because I have these daughters, but I don't want them to become public props for me becoming a better person.
Anita Hill
Well, that's interesting because I often hear from men who say, well, I never really understood this issue until I had daughters. And I wonder why they waited until they had daughters.
W. Kamau Bell
I mean, it's definitely an evolving conversation. So my daughters are part of that evolving conversation, but my wife wouldn't have married me if I wasn't already sort of evolving on those ideas.
Anita Hill
But you had to capture a lot of different perspectives, a whole lot, and you did it very well. I have to say, in the series.
W. Kamau Bell
Thank you.
Anita Hill
There is so much footage and information about Bill Cosby, on the one hand, when you talk about the career, there's so much information. And then even though there are multiple accusers, we know very little about them except the basics of their story. How do you put that together and make that a balanced conversation? And even a four episode series?
W. Kamau Bell
I mean we were aware, and I'm going to talk about my team here. This was a delicate balance. There weren't models in the world of how you achieved this balance. I think the two documentaries that I associate with this are OJ Simpson Made in America by Ezra Elman, which was like, how do you tell the story of a complicated man? You tell a story of a complicated America. So I feel like that was one of the tent poles of this. And the other one was Dream Hampton Surviving R. Kelly about not shying away from letting survivors talk. Don't just reduce them to sound bites. So in my mind, I was sort of trying to bring these two different types of filmmaking together. We don't want people to think we tricked them into watching a documentary that's just about, isn't Bill Cosby great? Even though some of this is going to come off as isn't Bill Cosby great?
So you have to figure out how do you sprinkle breadcrumbs? How do you mix those tones up in a way so that people who are there for one know that the other one's coming and people who are not there for the other know that the other one's coming. So they know there's going to be a pendulum. How do you keep it compelling? And I think the biggest thing we figured out was, in the Cosby sections, when we're talking about his career, the pace moves pretty quickly because there's a lot to cover. There's a lot of good archival and you can really motivate people through it with how you edit it. But when you get to the survivors, you slow down. We didn't use a lot of archival to cover up their talking. We didn't use music to let you know how to feel. We didn't do a lot of the tricks of TV to go, this is what we're trying to get you to. We let them talk with not a lot of adornment. And it really gave the doc the multiple shifts in movements that, a little bit, I was worried when we released it, people would be like, this is two different docs compounded into one, but people really understand how we're downshifting and up shifting. And I think people generally seem to really appreciate that.
Anita Hill
Yeah. I really was struck by how much space you gave survivors to talk about their experience, and I wondered if you learned something about the scope of the allegations from listening to them that maybe has been missing in the public conversation.
W. Kamau Bell
Yeah, I think very early on when we started doing the research, I didn't realize that some of the allegations went back as far as they did, that they track with his whole career, that they go back to the sixties. I think that even people who support the survivors don't understand. And people who don't support the survivors want to categorize this as 60 one-night stands that maybe went wrong, or 60 women who wanted something from him and that they're trying to be vindictive. But when you look at the work that he put into courting these women, that was not something I was aware of. So there's women who were in, he was in their lives for years. They would not hear from him for a long time and think they weren't going to hear from him again. And then he would reach out to them and he would fly them around the country and pay for acting lessons and all these things. And then one day they would wake up and realize what they'd gotten into. I didn't realize how much work he put into grooming these women.
Anita Hill
Yeah, it's almost predatory.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes. I think one of the survivors says he put as much work into his career as he did into these activities.
Anita Hill
Yes. I thought that was a very interesting line. And you've talked about your connection to Bill Cosby and you've talked a bit about America's connection to Cosby, but could you say a little bit more about that?
W. Kamau Bell
Yeah. Dick Gregory kicks the door open. He's the first black man, black comedian who's booked to be on late night talk shows. Dick Gregory was probably the biggest comedian in the country, but then he turned towards activism by talking very directly to white America about racism. So Bill Cosby comes on the scene and then Bill Cosby's able to really saunter through that door. But he says, I'm not going to be confrontational with you. Cosby is sort of this very safe and palatable choice, but also he was really funny and talking about things that white people could relate, to just going to the movies and his mom and football and Bible stories.
And so he really takes up a space that America needed of like, we're seeing all these images of black people on TV at a time when, if you turn on the news, black people are engaged in the work of trying to make America anti-racist, getting our butts kicked on the local news or the TV news doing sit-ins. At that point, Martin King Jr. is considered to be a dangerous radical by many white Americans. This one, this handsome, charismatic guy, he seems okay. And black people feel like, oh, we can finally turn on the TV and see one of us. And he's not shucking and jiving. He's not half stepping. He seems to be a fully embodied version of himself. And I think that you can't talk about the history of black people in television without talking about Bill Cosby at that point in his career.
Anita Hill
I learned that he was also something of an activist in the entertainment world. So that on the one hand he was non-confrontational as a comic, but as an actor, he became more of an activist, a civil rights activist, I'll say. Can you tell us about that? And did you know about it beforehand?
W. Kamau Bell
So before this film was ever even an inkling of an idea, after all the survivors started coming forward, I read an article about a filmmaker named Nonie Robinson, a black woman who was making a film about the history of black stunt performers in Hollywood. And her doc told the story of how Bill Cosby was the person, not among the people, but was the person who integrated black stunt performing because on the set of I Spy in the sixties, he refused to, he's like, if you don't find me a black stunt performer, I'm not going to do this show. And you have to think about, it's his big break. This show is making history. It's the first time a black man and a white man had been on TV as co-leads of a series. It's Hollywood history. He's an up and coming comedian, but he doesn't have that much power.
But he says, I refuse to do the show unless you find me a black stuntman. Because at that point, what Hollywood did is if a black person needed a stunt performer, they would take a white stunt performer and paint him black, literally black. And Bill Cosby saw that happening and said, I won't do it. And they said, okay. And they found him a black stunt performer who Bill Cosby worked with for years. And black stunt performers say that's the moment things changed. The thing that is amazing about that story is that Bill Cosby didn't run to the news with it. It didn't become a big national story. It very easily could have. So it's one of the many ways in which Bill Cosby, throughout his career, made the world better without demanding credit for it. Now, often Bill Cosby did demand credit for things, but that was not one of those things.
And so when I read that Nonie's documentary was sort of troubled at the point, apparently it's going to come out now, but at that point, she didn't know what to do with the documentary because she had to cut an interview she had with Bill Cosby. I was like, we're going to lose history here if we don't tell this story. That was the thing that made me go, somebody's got to tell this story if this documentary doesn't come out. Again, it will come out now. I don't think even Bill Cosby fans know that story. And again, it just makes the story more complicated. It doesn't make the story easy to tell because it's easy to say, if you think he sexually assaulted and raped these women, you could just say, well, he wasn't that funny, anyway. Okay, maybe not funny to you, but now we're talking about history that made the world better for black people.
Anita Hill
Okay, so maybe it's the cynical part of me, but I'm thinking about whether or not Bill Cosby used some of those outward facing sides, the humor, the activism, the sort of non-confrontational side of him in the way he walked into a room on television. Do you ever think that all of those things might have been cover for his sinister side? The Mr. Hyde side of him?
W. Kamau Bell
Jelani Cobb, who's a great writer and academic, and he's in the doc and he says, "A lot of people have tried to say this as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." But he says, "I think there's a compelling case that it's all Mr. Hyde." And I think that gets to that point that he's actively putting forward public faces. He knows that if he gives $20 million to a university, it gets him a lot of good coverage, but he gave $20 million to Spellman, a university for black women. So I think the idea being that two things can be true at once, even if they seem like they're opposite.
And one of the things that has happened because of this doc is that I've heard other stories of Bill Cosby, some of them about sexual assault, but some of them about just boorish behavior where people would be like, I saw Bill Cosby somewhere and I was excited to meet him and he was not nice to me at all. Not just blew me off, but not nice or making fun of people in ways that felt cruel or that didn't feel like the Bill Cosby they saw on TV. Now, if that's just the story, if we don't have all these sexual assault stories, that is true of many standup comedians. But when the whole story of Bill Cosby, it does feel like that offstage face is meaner than you would expect for a guy who is being heralded as America's dad.
Anita Hill
After the break, we talk about the forces that enable Cosby to be like Mr. Hyde and how this documentary series models a conversation about issues that we'd rather not face, but must.
You are listening to Getting Even. I'm Anita Hill, I'm speaking with W. Kamau Bell about his documentary series. We Need to Talk About Cosby.
We had these clues that he was Mr. Hyde, yet we were willing to accommodate him.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes.
Anita Hill
And so I really want us to think about why we were accommodating him. Bottom line is that we stay silent and we silence others to protect something. And when we're talking about rape culture, it's not necessarily that we stay silent to protect the victims, nor is it that we stay silent to protect the accusers. We're protecting something else. I believe, some emotional investment that we have in people like Bill Cosby or we're protecting an economic investment that we have in Bill Cosby.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes. I think it's such a toxic stew of things we're talking about here. I think that we have to look at the fact that one, Hollywood was specifically designed to create false images of its stars. When Bill Cosby first comes onto the scene, we're still in that studio era where if Hollywood decides you're going to be a star, and back then they were deciding you were going to be a star, what do they do? They change your name, they dye your hair, they give you new clothes, they tell you who you're dating, even if you're gay, you're still going to date this woman. And they get pictures taken of you being casual when you're not being casual. And they control where you go and who you talk to. And if you're doing things they don't want you to do, they cover that stuff up.
So Hollywood led us to believe over years that these people were perfect people even though they weren't. And I think that starts to cover up a lot of bad behavior. And it starts to create an industry that is good at covering up bad behavior so that by the time you hear that one of your favorite celebrities is doing awful things, you're like, but what do you mean? He's such a good person, I've been told. He's done all these good things, I've been told. So it's a cognitive dissonance where you're like, but he's never done a bad thing before. And what you don't know is his bad things have been covered up all this time. If it's a black celebrity, we have lots of role models that could be promoted to being stars in this country, but because of racism, they don't get access to being stars the same way that white people do.
So we feel like we don't have enough heroes and role models. And so it is hard for some black people to think we're going to lose one, even if it's at the cost of 60 women who've accused that person of rape. We're sort of trying to do the math. Does the good outweigh the bad? Okay, he did these things to these 60 women, but he did all these good things and that outweighs the bad. And I don't think the math works that way. I think you have to sort of go there is good and there is bad, and we can look at it, but if the bad is bad enough, there's not enough good to outweigh it.
Anita Hill
Well, and I also think that you have this history of over-policing in the black community.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes.
Anita Hill
Where they want to keep the police at bay, especially from somebody who we have learned to believe that, okay, if Bill Cosby can make it, he can lift the rest of us or some more of us can come through.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes.
Anita Hill
And could you just say a little bit about the role that respectability politics has played in the black community perception of good and evil?
W. Kamau Bell
Whenever I hear black people who feel like they can't handle all of this information or don't want to handle all this information or want to pretend like the survivors are lying, it's sort of tragic for me because I feel like one thing black people have been good at in the history of this country is acknowledging the dual nature of America. So we have been able to, on some level, go America is the greatest country in the world, because that's what we've been sold. And we believe that and we can sort of point to opportunities in our life. This might not have happened in another country, but at the same time, we're also able to acknowledge America is specifically hard on black people.
And so I think respectability politics acts like the structural stuff doesn't exist, and it's just about, this is the greatest country in the world. If Bill Cosby can make it, you can make it. When in fact, that's just not true. You can look at him as an example of like, yay, he made it and, yay, he's helping other people get through. But it is not true that we all have the same access to making it, specifically if you're a black person, specifically at that point in history. And showbiz didn't try to make Bill Cosby the biggest star in the world. It happened because of a lot of different things that came together.
Anita Hill
But showbiz was got to capitalize on it.
W. Kamau Bell
Once he's in there, yes, he's getting access to all the commercials, all the endorsements, all the opportunities and all the protection.
Anita Hill
I lead something called the Hollywood Commission and we're charged with trying to deal with some of these problems in the entertainment industry of rape culture and devaluing of women. And I think about how often you hear when someone is finally revealed, somebody like Harvey Weinstein or Scott Rudin, how often you hear, oh, well, it was well known in Hollywood.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes.
Anita Hill
But it's not ever acted upon. And so I want to span out a bit because this is a conversation about Cosby, but as you say, it's a conversation about a bigger social issue We have, the Hollywood community is only one. I've dealt with university communities and church communities all around these issues. And I'm wondering if you think the series can be a model for how we move forward on claims of sexual abuse in the black community, of course, but other communities that grapple with the same problem, the problem of silencing and denials and dismissiveness.
W. Kamau Bell
I hope so. I think I'm aware that, at the end of the day, this is just a series of episodes of television and that's not legislation, it's not structural change, it's not institutional change. I have to understand that the work is what happens after people watch it when they turn to each other or they go online and they start to go, what do we do now? And I want to be engaged in the what do we do now conversation. I don't think it's my job to lead it, but I think this film can help be a part of that. But to me, the film is absolutely wants to be like... And all those places, you name the church, Hollywood, all these different communities, what are the unifying factors? There's an institutional mandate to protect people in power no matter what. And I think we have to get away from that and power the ways in which you can anonymously tip us off on some bad behavior. We don't have that in society generally, not enough. That I think is one of the key things to work on, that it's not about adjusting the current nature of all this. It's about going, we need to redo the structure.
Anita Hill
Yeah. It's ultimately about redoing the structure. But I have to say, if I want to have a conversation about rape culture in Hollywood, I'm going to come to you and you are going to help me design it.
W. Kamau Bell
You ain't said nothing but a word.
Anita Hill
Okay.
W. Kamau Bell
I'm happy to be... I feel like there are people, and I say this, who I'm just enlisted like a private in the army and I'm sort of feeling that way about you. If you need me, I'm here for you. I'm happy to. I think one thing that I do know how to do is to sort of have these conversations, but I also know how to surround myself with people who are smarter than me who can help these conversations be productive and meaningful and have lasting effects.
Anita Hill
Well, thank you. Listen, do you have any questions for me?
W. Kamau Bell
You've had this conversation a trillion times about the Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas. But for me personally, how I went into that not understanding and how I came out on the other side, understanding something that I did not understand, and a lot of that was conversations with my mom who was sort of walking me through what was going on there. The thing that I think that I've realized as I get older, not enough of us came through. And I was not fixed at the end of that. It took me years to get to where I am now. How can we do this better? What could we have done better? Because I don't think I came through far enough on the other side, but I certainly understood things about harassment in the workplace that I did not understand before.
Anita Hill
I think the answer to that doesn't go back to 1991. And I think we're still trying to find how we can do better. But first of all, I think we have to create forums where survivors, victims and accused can be heard as equals, where the balance isn't tipped toward one or the other.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes.
Anita Hill
We also have to have a forum where people around us, because these situations don't just involve two people. They involve communities many times, and people in the communities can vent their frustrations, anger, disappointment, and really their fears because I think a lot of that is happening and why people have such a strong reaction. So we've got to be able to create that space where people can talk about their fears and understand how some of them are misplaced. They're based on a lot of myths and tropes and are racist and sexist. And ultimately what I think is necessary is a place where we can actually have a conversation about equality that's thorough, that's real, that covers all kinds of identities because it's typically, these conversations happen and, with the Thomas hearing, well, let's focus on racial equality because he's a black man, but they weren't thinking about gender equality. So that's my start, that start to answer your question. How can we make it better? And I say this, not to patronize you, but I do believe that they start with real, honest, genuine conversations.
W. Kamau Bell
I'll be clear, I don't feel patronized by that at all. Because I didn't invent conversations.
Anita Hill
Didn't you? Oh my gosh.
W. Kamau Bell
No I didn't.
Anita Hill
I was sure it was you, but I'm thankful to whoever it was.
W. Kamau Bell
Yeah.
Anita Hill
And you have brought them to another level, even if you didn't invent them.
W. Kamau Bell
Thank you. I appreciate that. I am here to serve however you feel like I need to serve because there's just so much more work to do. And I was thinking about, this is the way in which I'm thinking about my kids. When my mom handed me the America is Racist baton. It was lighter than when she had gotten it. And I think I'm in danger of handing my kids a heavier baton.
Anita Hill
That's scary, isn't it?
W. Kamau Bell
Yes, it is very scary. And I think when my mom handed to me, the conversation, like you said, was just about racism. And now that conversation's a lot more inclusive, so the baton's automatically going to be different, but I don't want it to be heavier.
Anita Hill
Right. Well, that's great. That's gives me something to think about and look forward to because I think you're absolutely right. The last thing any of us want to do is to pass on a world that's in worse shape than what we got when we were born into it.
W. Kamau Bell
Yes.
Anita Hill
Like, oh my God. Again, I just want to thank you for making the film.
W. Kamau Bell
Thank you.
Anita Hill
I want to thank you for really being so honest, sharing with us why you've made it, and also, not just making the film, but really showing us how we can address these issues, the issue of rape culture and our denial of it.
W. Kamau Bell
Thank you. It's an honor to be here, an extreme honor. And as I said, I'm now officially enrolled as a soldier in the Anita Hill Army, so I'm here when you need me.
Anita Hill
Thank you.
I grew up in an era where it was understood that you didn't speak publicly about bad behavior happening within your community. Today, I know that it was a survival tactic in black communities as well as many others. And sometimes it was necessary. But as Audrey Lorde told us, "Your silence will not protect you." W. Kamau Bell's film We Need to Talk About Cosby reminds us that silence won't protect our communities either.
Through his documentary, Bell brought victims out of the margins and placed them visibly in the center of the conversation as humans, not as caricatures. And he gave activists and expert space to shed light on the presumptions that make people unwilling to believe victims and structures that make it impossible for victims to be heard. Bell allowed for resolution for the people who participated in the conversation. Even if, in the end, not everyone agreed, he forces us to think about accountability and what it looks like. We Need to Talk About Cosby provides a blueprint for other hard conversations.
Next week you'll hear me in conversation with Sam Fragoso on an episode of his podcast, Talk Easy. We'll be back the following week with authors Alice and Rebecca Walker.
Getting Even is a production of Pushkin Industries and is written and hosted by me, Anita Hill. It is produced by Mo LaBorde and Brittani Brown. Our editor is Sarah Kramer. Our engineer is Amanda K. Wang, and our showrunner is Sachar Mathias. Luis Guerra composed original music for the show. Our executive producers are Mia Lobel and Leital Molad. Our director of development is Justine Lang. At Pushkin, thanks to Heather Fain, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrell, Julia Barton, Jon Schnaars and Jacob Weisberg.
You can find me on Twitter at Anita Hill and on Facebook at Anita Hill. You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin Pods and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin.fm. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus, subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear Getting Even and other Pushkin shows ad free and receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up on the Getting Even show page in Apple Podcast or at pushkin.fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.