Jasmine Guy says Bill Cosby allegations are ‘heartbreaking’
Guy also opened up about her time on 'A Different World' and her role in the new Prime Video series, 'Harlem'
In a recent interview, Jasmine Guy opened up about Bill Cosby and her range of reactions to his sexual assault conviction.
Guy told Page Six, “I couldn’t really put the two images together. It’s heartbreaking for those of us in the business that admire him, his talent and his mind — and then as a Black person it’s heartbreaking because he meant a lot to the community.”
One of Guy’s biggest roles was as Whitley Gilbert-Wayne in the Cosby Show spinoff, A Different World.
When she first heard rumblings of the accusations against Cosby, she says she asked the men in her life about what could have possibly motivated him.
“Just to [try to] understand the mentality, which is still baffling,” she shared. “I asked practical questions like, ‘What pleasure do you get out of being with someone who’s kind of out of it?’”
She continued, “I don’t expect people to be perfect and I don’t expect human beings not to falter. I just didn’t understand. I don’t know, there was a meanness behind it that I couldn’t understand.”
She added that she had a distant working relationship with Cosby during the A Different World days, having only interacted with him “a handful of times.”
Guy said that despite the success of the show, which was credited for encouraging more young people to attend HBCUs, NBC often saw it as “coming in second” to The Cosby Show.
“We were always told we were number two because we came in between Cheers and Cosby,” she explained. “We were always told we stayed on the air because Cosby’s on the air. Our power was always diminished in Hollywood, to the networks, to the powers that be. We were not treated as I saw other actors treated on other hit shows.”
Guy currently stars in the hit Prime Video series, Harlem, along with Whoopi Goldberg, Meagan Good, Grace Byers, and more. Guy portrays “Patricia, Quinn’s (Byers) wealthy mom who wants her daughter to give up her seemingly failing career as a designer and just settle down,” on the series.
After years of allegations, Cosby was eventually convicted in 2018, theGrio previously reported. Last summer, after serving two years of a three-to-10-year sentence, Cosby’s conviction was overturned. He was released from prison in June of 2021.
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