Camille Cosby has remained mostly silent in the months that her husband has been under suspicion and accusation of drugging and raping women. The Cosbys have let their attorneys do most of the talking on the matter.
Camille Cosby has been portrayed as a major driving force behind her husband’s success, and does serve as his manager. Tabloid reports based on unnamed “inside sources” say that Camille Cosby is not willing to let her husband’s reputation and career go down without a fight. They say she is circling the wagons, consulting with managers and attorneys about how to handle the scandal that threatens to derail Bill Cosby’s legacy permanently.
“The man I met, and fell in love with, and whom I continue to love, is the man you all knew through his work,” Camille Cosby has assured the public. “He is a kind man, a generous man, a funny man, and a wonderful husband, father and friend. He is the man you thought you knew.”
Ever since her statement that included those words above, Camille Cosby has been silent, as has Bill. That silence, and the weight of so many women now coming forward to accuse Bill Cosby, has left onlookers to dig around for other clues, especially from the past.
The recently-released deposition excerpts are one such clue. Cosby’s legal team fought hard to keep that deposition sealed as part of a confidentiality agreement between Cosby and Andrea Constand, with whom he settled a civil suit. Constand argued that Cosby’s comments in the deposition should be released. When they were, the media and the public were shocked to learn that Bill Cosby had admitted to cheating, admitted to paying to keep affairs quiet, admitted to hiding them from his wife, and — most curiously — admitted to using Quaaludes for sex with other women.
i need a quaalude. wtf is BIll Cosby when u need him?
— KellyLee (@jasian12345) July 22, 2015
Camille Cosby, so Bill says in the deposition, was intentionally kept in the dark about all this. He would tell her he was helping someone out with her education, when in fact he admitted he was buying her silence after having had sex with her.
Cosby’s attorneys now argue that his admission of using Quaaludes is in no way an admission to drugging women. Indeed, Cosby was asked about that at the time of the deposition, and was instructed by his attorneys to not answer. The lawyers pointed out many had used Quaaludes in the 70s for consensual sex. They said Cosby was one of those people.
This line of argument does raise an interesting question:
Did Bill Cosby ever offer or suggest Quaaludes to Camille?
In one oddly-prescient scene in an episode of The Cosby Show, Cosby’s character Heathcliff Huxtable flirts with his on-screen wife, Clair, offering her an aphrodisiac barbecue sauce. Clair is often said to be based on Camille Cosby.
If Camille Cosby were to say publicly that she and Bill had used Quaaludes recreationally for consensual sex, might that color the opinion of those who have seen that deposition as damning?
Camille Cosby has said that her greatest embarrassment over a cheating scandal Bill was embroiled in back in 1997 was that the public found out.
“It was embarrassing in terms of it being an invasion of our private lives,” Camille told Oprah. “That was something very personal, between the two of us… I already knew, but it wasn’t for the whole world to know.”
Whether she is willing to say much of anything about all this, especially if it requires any more personal revelations, remains to be seen.