The ever-growing list of Bill Cosby accusers has just grown by one, with model Beverly Johnson telling Vanity Fair that Cosby drugged her in the mid-80s.
According to Johnson, the incident occurred during an audition for “The Cosby Show.”
“Cosby said he wanted to see how I handled various scenes, so he suggested that I pretend to be drunk.” Johnson recalled. “As I readied myself to be the best drunk I could be, he offered me a cappuccino from the espresso machine. I told him I didn’t drink coffee the [sic] late in the afternoon because it made getting to sleep at night more difficult. He wouldn’t let it go. He insisted that his espresso machine was the best model on the market and promised I’d never tasted a cappuccino quite like this one.”
Johnson told the magazine that, by the second sip of her cappuccino, she knew that she’d been drugged, “and drugged good.”
“My head became woozy, my speech became slurred, and the room began to spin nonstop,” Johnson said. “Cosby motioned for me to come over to him as though we were really about to act out the scene. He put his hands around my waist, and I managed to put my hand on his shoulder in order to steady myself.”
With her body going “completely limp,” Johnson said, she yelled, “You are a motherfucker aren’t you?” at Cosby. As she continued to curse at him, the comedian expressed a “seething anger.” At that point, Johnson said, Cosby yanked her down a set of stairs, pulled her outside and hailed a cab for her.
“It was still late afternoon and the sun hadn’t completely gone down yet. When we reached the front door, he pulled me outside of the brownstone and then, with his hand still tightly clenched around my arm, stood in the middle of the street waving down taxis,” Johnson said. “When one stopped, Cosby opened the door, shoved me into it and slammed the door behind me without ever saying a word. I somehow managed to tell the driver my address and before blacking out, I looked at the cabbie and asked, as if he knew: ‘Did I really just call Bill Cosby a motherfucker?’”
Johnson said that she considered including the incident in her 2013 memoir, but “I didn’t want to get involved in a he-said/she-said situation.” However, with accusers going public with their accusations against Cosby, Johnson said it was time to relate her tale.
“Now that other women have come forward with their nightmare stories, I join them,” Johnson said.
“Many are still afraid to speak up. I couldn’t sit back and watch the other women be vilified and shamed for something I knew was true,” the model noted.
Cosby has been besieged in recent weeks by accusations from numerous women who claim that he sexual assaulted them, with drugging being a common theme in the claims. In the wake of the mounting allegations against 77-year-old Cosby, his attorney Martin Singer released a statement saying: “The new, never-before-heard claims from women who have come forward in the past two weeks with unsubstantiated, fantastical stories about things they say occurred 30, 40, or even 50 years ago have escalated far past the point of absurdity.
“These brand new claims about alleged decades-old events are becoming increasingly ridiculous, and it is completely illogical that so many people would have said nothing, done nothing, and made no reports to law enforcement or asserted civil claims if they thought they had been assaulted over a span of so many years,” Singer said.
Since the allegations against Cosby surfaced, NBC has abandoned plans to develop a comedy that would have starred Cosby, while Netflix has postponed a comedy special featuring the comedian. The U.S. Navy has also revoked Cosby’s honorary title of Chief Petty Officer, which was bestowed to Cosby in 2011.
A representative for Johnson did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.