Beverly Johnson Talks Bill Cosby, Alleged Drugging

Beverly Johnson, one of the original supermodels in the fashion world–rising to fame in the 1970s, has joined the ranks of women pointing fingers at Bill Cosby. While Johnson’s accusation ...
Beverly Johnson Talks Bill Cosby, Alleged Drugging
Written by Kimberly Ripley
  • Beverly Johnson, one of the original supermodels in the fashion world–rising to fame in the 1970s, has joined the ranks of women pointing fingers at Bill Cosby. While Johnson’s accusation isn’t one of sexual assault, in a recent piece she wrote for Vanity Fair, she says Bill Cosby drugged her at his New York City townhouse back in the 1980s.

    CBS News reports that Beverly Johnson is likely the most famous of all the women who have pointed fingers at Cosby for similar reasons. She was at the top of her modeling career at that time and wanted to try her hand in the acting world.

    “He was Bill Cosby, he was charming and elegant and kind,” Beverly Johnson told CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy. “He seemed very concerned and really willing to help me see my goals.”

    Johnson was auditioning for a role on The Cosby Show when Bill Cosby invited her to his townhouse to rehearse.

    “He kept insisting to have this cappuccino, it’s the best coffee you’ll ever have, and so I relented and I took the coffee. And I took a sip of the coffee and I immediately felt strange and then I took another sip of the cappuccino and that drug was so powerful it just came on like a moving train, and I knew I had been drugged,” Johnson said. “I knew he was trying to take advantage of me, but I knew this goes above and beyond making a pass at a woman. You don’t make a pass at a woman by drugging her.”

    Johnson says she doesn’t believe Cosby sexually assaulted her, but she does know she was drugged when he dragged her out of his home and put her inside a cab. She believes that letting him know she knew what he’d done was probably enough to prevent any kind of sexual assault. She swore at him to let him know she knew she had been drugged.

    “I just looked him dead in the eye and called him a name,” Johnson said during her interview. “I called him an MF. I said, ‘You’re an MF, aren’t you?'”

    She made it very clear that she used the actual words, and not simply the letters MF.

    “I wanted him to know that I knew that he drugged me,” Johnson said.

    Beverly Johnson also said she called Bill Cosby to confront him about the incident a few days after it took place. She says Camille Cosby answered the phone, and that she never spoke to the comedian again.

    So why is Johnson coming forward now? This is the question that so many who want to believe Bill Cosby is innocent are asking.

    “It was the women that have come forward that gave me the courage to come forward…then to hear their stories that were very similar to mine, I knew that I had to say something,” she said.

    She also added that women tend not to speak out against powerful men, and she feels that has in some ways allowed Bill Cosby to continue his alleged behavior.

    “Now that I speak to other people in the business in Hollywood, it’s one of the best kept secrets in Hollywood,” Johnson said. “I most certainly had–I would not have gone to his home if I had known he had that kind of reputation. Absolutely not.”

    Do you think Beverly Johnson will be the proverbial nail in Bill Cosby’s coffin? Does she have any underlying reason for making such allegations?

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