Denis Leary Slams Bill Cosby, Says His Classic Bits Will Never Be the Same
He says he’s always looked up to Cosby as a great comedian.
— -- Denis Leary says he’s always looked up to Bill Cosby as a great comedian. But not anymore. With rape allegations now hovering over Cosby’s legacy, his view has forever changed.
"There’s no other way to say it,” Leary told ABC’s Popcorn with Peter Travers. “It’s so unbelievably twisted."
The 47-year-old Leary, who was promoting his new AMC TV series, Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll, says there’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes talk about Cosby in the comedy world. And to him, there’s only one way to look at the situation.
"Because the way I looked at it was, this was a guy who had power and just wielded it in the worst, most secret, you know, horrible way while pretending to be this, it’s like Jekyll and Hyde. If they do the TV movie, it’s just going to be a Jekyll and Hyde story.”
He adds, “I don’t think I can ever ... listen to another bit of his ever. All those classic bits ... just gone out the window. There’s not a chance. There’s no way you could listen to Noah and the Ark, any of those classic bits, you know, Dad is Great, Give Us [the] Chocolate Cake, out the window. Every time you see a picture of him. I’ve said it before, I’m saying it again…you can’t (expletive) think of Jello without thinking of Bill Cosby and without thinking about the behavior. Jello’s out!”
Leary says recently released court documents from 2005 showing Cosby admitted to giving Quaaludes to a woman he had sex with have helped sway his opinions.
Cosby has never been charged with a crime in connection to the accusations of drugging and sexual assault and his lawyers have denied many of the allegations.
Regarding a settlement Cosby reached with one of his accusers in 2006, the Cosby camp said in a statement to ABC News last week, "The only reason Mr. Cosby settled was because it would have been embarrassing in those days to put all those women on the stand and his family had no clue. That would have been very hurtful."
Related Stories
ABC News Live