Embattled comedian Bill Cosby is preparing both for his long-awaited day in court and, he hopes, an eventual return to performing stand-up comedy.
“I miss it all and I hope that day will come. I have some routines and storytelling that I am working on,” Cosby told the National Newspaper Publishers Association ((NNPA) on Tuesday.
“I think about walking out on stage somewhere in the United States of America and sitting down in a chair and giving the performance that will be the beginning of the next chapter of my career,” he added.
The 79-year-old TV star’s comments, his first in more than two years, come weeks ahead of a jury selection process in his sexual-assault case.
Cosby has been charged with drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, a Temple University employee, at his Pennsylvania home in 2004. It is the sole criminal case stemming from more than fifty allegations of sexual assault or harassment, many of which have exceeded the statute of limitations.
Cosby, whose trial is set to begin in early June, has pleaded not guilty and insists that his encounter with Constand was consensual. If convicted, he could face up to ten years in prison.
In his interview with NNPA this week, the comedian also confirmed that he has gone blind. After losing his vision, the man dubbed “America’s Dad” needed rehearsed visual assistance to make it on stage before performing his comedy routine.
“When he would perform, we’d draw a wide straight yellow line from backstage to the chair on the stage and he’d rehearse the walk, hours before the show,” PR rep Andrew Wyatt, who worked with Cosby for many years, told the outlet.
Cosby did not address his case in the interview, though he shared his thoughts about the nation’s history.
“The history about African-Americans is a history of the United States; but the true histories, not the propaganda that is standard in our nation’s history books,” Cosby told the group of black-owned newspapers. “The great writer, James Baldwin, said, ‘If you lie about me, then you lie about yourself.’ The revolution is in the home. There is something about someone saying, ‘I didn’t know that,’ that could cause a change in that person’s thinking.”
Meanwhile, Cosby’s daughter Evin described in an essay published by the outlet on Tuesday how her father’s legal battles have negatively affected her family.
“The harsh and hurtful accusations…that supposedly happened 40 or 50 years ago, before I was born, in another lifetime, and that have been carelessly repeated as truth without allowing my dad to defend himself and without requiring proof, has punished not just my dad but every one of us,” Evin wrote.
“The public persecution of my dad, my kids’ grandfather, and the cruelty of the media and those who speak out branding my father a ‘rapist’ without ever knowing the truth and who shame our family and our friends for defending my dad, makes all of this so much worse for my family and my children,” she added.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson
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