Bill Cosby Breaks His Silence In First Prison Interview

Bill Cosby is speaking out for the first time since beginning his three-to-10 year prison sentence for sexually assaulting Temple University women’s basketball coach Andrea Constand. In the interview, the disgraced comedian maintained his innocence and called his trial a “setup” and the jurors “impostors.”

Speaking with National Newspaper Publishers Association’s BlackPressUSA.com, Cosby admitted that he does not believe he will be released on the earlier side of his sentence.

“I have eight years and nine months left,” he said. “When I come up for parole, they’re not going to hear me say that I have remorse. I was there. I don’t care what group of people come along and talk about this when they weren’t there. They don’t know.”

The comic, while speaking on his trial, said it was “all a setup. That whole jury thing. They were impostors.”

He went on to reference an incident after the jury members were selected when an alternate juror claimed to have overheard an already seated juror say that the former actor was guilty. Cosby’s counsel raised the issue with the judge, who later found that there was insufficient evidence to support the claim since the juror remained.

“Look at the woman who blew the whistle,” he said, alluding to the potential juror who overheard the comment, “He’s guilty, we can all go home now.”

“Then she went in and came out smiling, it’s something attorneys will tell you is called a payoff,” he continued. “I know what they’ve done to my people. But my people are going to view me and say, ‘That boy looks good. That boy is strong.’ I have too many heroes that I’ve sat with. Too many heroes whom I listened to like John Henrik Clarke, Kenneth Clark and Dorothy Height. Those people are very strong, and they saw the rejection of their people. This is political. I can see the whole thing.”

Clarke was an African-American historian and pioneer in creating Pan-African and Africana studies, Clark was a well-known British art historian, and Height was one of the most revolutionary leaders of the civil rights movement.

Elsewhere in the interview, Cosby refers to his cell as “my penthouse,” before admitting, “I am a privileged man in prison.”

Read his full comments, where he claims to be at the right place at the right time to reach African-American men and why he remains concerned for all of Black America, here.