Phylicia Rashad chats with Oprah on defending 'The Cosby Show''s portrayal of a black family
In an interview for Oprah’s Next Chapter, Oprah asks Rashad about the issue of race and how she had to defend The Cosby Show to the media.
From Clutch Magazine:
On Thursday night, April 30, 1992 the last episode of The Cosby Show aired. After an amazing 8-year run, and countless awards, the family that everyone came to love took their last bow. Twenty-one years later, not only is The Cosby Show still considered ground breaking, its portrayal of the black family is still talked about. Phylicia Rashad portrayed America’s favorite mom on The Cosby Show as Claire Huxtable. The Huxtables were the epitome of an upper-middle class black family. Claire was an educated lawyer, married to a doctor and raising a family in Brooklyn, New York.
Even with such a positive portrayal of a black family, it still had its fair share of critics. Many of the critics thought the Huxtables weren’t a realistic family, even though, in the section of Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, where The Cosby Show was set, and surrounding areas like Fort Greene, there were similar black families living the “Huxtable Life” in real-time. God forbid a black family was portrayed positively on television.
In an interview for Oprah’s Next Chapter, Oprah asks Rashad about the issue of race and how she had to defend The Cosby Show to the media. “You all had to answer that question over and over and over — how is it realistic to have a doctor and a lawyer in the same house?” Oprah asked.
“Well, they didn’t grow up in my community,” Rashad says of the show’s critics. “I grew up in Houston, Texas, in [the] third ward and it was very realistic.”
Read the rest of this story on Clutch Magazine.
