The Cosby Show cast starred Bill Cosby and other beloved actors in classic sitcom-style. However, the cast has gone in many different directions since the show ended. Today, we're taking a look at the Cosby Show cast then and now to see how they've changed through the years.
00:00 - Intro
0:17 - Raven-Symoné as Olivia Kendall
1:36 - Joseph C. Phillips as Lt. Martin Kendall
2:49 - Geoffrey Owens as Elvin Tibideaux
3:54 - Sabrina Le Beauf as Sondra Huxtable
5:08 - Keshia Knight Pulliam as Rudy Huxtable
6:28 - Tempestt Bledsoe as Vanessa Huxtable
7:49 - Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Theodore Huxtable
9:03 - Lisa Bonet as Denise Huxtable
10:19 - Phylicia Rashad as Clair Huxtable
11:31 - Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable
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In the early 1980s, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, two former executives at ABC, left the network to start their own production company. At ABC, they had overseen sitcoms such as Mork & Mindy, Three's Company, and Welcome Back, Kotter. The two partners decided that to get a sitcom to sell for their fledgling company, they needed a big name behind it. The career of Bill Cosby, who starred in two failed sitcoms during the 1970s, produced award-winning stand-up comedy albums, and had roles in several different films, was relatively static during the early 1980s. According to a Chicago Tribune article from July 1985, despite Carsey and Werner's connection to the network, Lewis Erlicht, president of ABC Entertainment, passed on the show, prompting a pitch to rival network, NBC.
Outside of his work on his cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Cosby was doing little in film or television, but Carsey and Werner were fans of Cosby's stand-up comedy and thought it would be the perfect material for a family sitcom.
Cosby originally proposed that the couple should both have blue-collar worker jobs, with the father a limousine driver, who owned his own car, and the mother an electrician. With advice from his wife Camille Cosby, though, the concept was changed so that the family was well-off financially, with the mother a lawyer and the father a physician.
Cosby wanted the program to be educational, reflecting his own background in education. He also insisted that the program be taped in New York City instead of Los Angeles, where most television programs were taped. The Huxtable home exterior was filmed at 10 St. Luke's Place near 7th Avenue in Manhattan's Greenwich Village (although in the show, the residence was the fictional "10 Stigwood Avenue").
The earliest episodes of the series were videotaped at NBC's Brooklyn studios (subsequently JC Studios). The network later sold that building, and production moved to the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens. Even though the show was set to take place in Brooklyn, the exterior façade was actually of a brownstone townhouse located in Manhattan's Greenwich Village at 10 Leroy Street/ 10 St. Luke's Place. The pilot was filmed in May 1984, with season one's production commencing in July 1984, and the first taping on August 1, 1984 (Goodbye Mr. Goldfish).
Although the cast and characters were predominantly African American, the program was unusual in that issues of race were rarely mentioned when compared to other situation comedies of the time, such as The Jeffersons. However, The Cosby Show had African-American themes, such as the Civil rights movement, and it frequently promoted African-American culture and culture of Africa represented by artists and musicians such as Jacob Lawrence, Miles Davis, James Brown, B.B. King, Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miriam Makeba.
During the third season of the show, actress Phylicia Rashad was pregnant with her daughter Condola Rashād. Rather than write this pregnancy into the character of Clair Huxtable, the producers simply greatly reduced Rashad's scenes or filmed in such a way that her pregnancy was not noticeable.
Another pregnancy of one of the main stars, that of Lisa Bonet, almost caused the actress to be fired, especially coming in the wake of appearing in the film Angel Heart, which contained graphic sexual scenes with actor Mickey Rourke. Bill Cosby strongly disapproved of Bonet appearing in the film, but she was allowed to retain her role on A Different World until returning to The Cosby Show after her pregnancy. Tensions remained, however, and Bonet was eventually fired from the show in April 1991.
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