Author: Christina Dugan / Source: PEOPLE.com
Geoffrey Owens says the Bill Cosby scandal was just one of the factors that led him to search for work outside of his industry, including bagging groceries at Trader Joe’s.
Owens, 57, had been receiving royalties from The Cosby Show for years. But when Cosby, 81, was accused and later convicted of sexual assault, reruns were pulled from syndications, and the checks stopped coming.
“Yes, it impacted me financially,” Owens exclusively tells PEOPLE. “At the time that the show was pulled, that did make a difference in our income. That was one of the elements that led to my getting to the place where I said to myself, ‘I have to do something’ and I was thinking, ‘What can I do?’ and the answer ended up being Trader Joe’s, which is actually a wonderful situation for me in many ways. But I got to the point, I just had to do something to support myself and my family.”
After a customer took a photo of Owens, who played Elvin Tibideaux on The Cosby Show from 1985 to 1992, working at a Trader Joe’s in New Jersey, the actor says he was beyond “hurt.”
“I felt really humiliated,” Owens says of the photo. “From the time that I heard that the article might be done to the time it came out, I tried to envision the worse case scenario just to prepare myself and then it was just a little bit…
The post Geoffrey Owens Says Losing TV Royalties After Bill Cosby’s Scandal ‘Impacted Me Financially’ appeared first on FeedBox.