The primary simultaneous imbalance and blessing of W. Kamau Bell’s We Need To Talk About Cosby is that even with a running time of four-hours, it’s clear by the end there’s still a lot more to say about the ex-convicted sex offender who was once America’s Dad.
Which is sort of the point of the United Shades of America host directed docuseries, premiering today at the virtual Sundance Film Festival and on January 30 on Showtime. After potent interviews with fellow comedians, journalists, cultural commentators, and lawyers as well as several of the dozens and dozens of survivors of Cosby’s sexual assaults in the docuseries, when Bell asks towards the conclusion of the fourth episode if you can “separate the art from the artist, and should you?” the conversation has no choice but to continue in the existential afterparty.
Sprung free last year by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from his 2018 sentence for the 2004 rape of Andrea Constand, the now 84-year old unrepentant Cosby remains a monster in the minds of most for his decades of predatory, cruel and savage violations. At the same time, the actor was a constant and expanding presence from the early 1960s to the ratings topping sitcom success of The Cosby Show and well into the 21st century, even after his 2015 arrest. The cultural blast radius of the actor and activist with his preaching to Black America and more of the value of education, equality and empowerment cannot be denied either.
For an America that often likes things to be binary at best, the excruciating truth is Cosby is complex.
“The juxtaposition is just bananas,” Cosby Show vet Eden Tirl succinctly says in the surprisingly spry series. And that is much more than a Black thing, as Bell explores in the deft docuseries through his sprawling interview subjects, archival footage and various visual and narratives techniques.
Hijacked and bookended by ongoing events to some extent, We Need To Talk About Cosby thrives on the fuel of the contradictions it probes. Admittedly, to that end, some will find their opinions on the comedian confirmed, be they high, low or floating. Some will pound their heads against the wall in exacerbation over the equivalencies explored. Some may even shrug to the solipsism suggest at times. Some may be simply overwhelmed.
Yet, amongst all the peeling back of the rancid and rich onion known as Bill Cosby, the dialogue out of this narratively refined enterprise never strays from a grounding humanity, especially to the women who have suffered from the actor’s alleged attacks.
In that sense, as prosecutors seek intervention from the Supreme Court of the United States on the overturned conviction, We Need To Talk About Cosby is a docuseries that truly sets up its own sequel, and that sequel is us.
We Need to Talk About Cosby is a Boardwalk Pictures Production in association with WKB Industries for Showtime. The series is EP’d by Bell, Andrew Fried, Katie A. King, Dane Lillegard, Jordan Wynn and Sarina Roma. King also serves as showrunner for the docuseries and Geraldine Porras is co-executive producer.
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