After telling Bill Cosby of her pregnancy, the now-disgraced comedian got so angry that he allegedly kicked Lisa Bonet off the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World. In Lenny Kravitz‘s new book, Let Love Rule: A Memoir, he describes the incident that occurred in 1998 after the first season of A Different World.
According to Kravitz, Cosby knew what was coming his way when Bonet and a producer from the show, Debbie Allen, called a meeting with him.
“You’re here to tell me you’re pregnant, aren’t you?” Cosby allegedly asked Bonet.
Before the meeting even began Cosby allegedly asked Bonet, “You’re here to tell me you’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
Allen tried to think of a creative way to write the pregnancy into the show as part of Bonet’s character, Denise Huxtable’s story arch. She suggested that the storyline would be of Denise raising the child on her own with the help of friends.
Cosby didn’t say anything at the time of the meeting, except that he’d consider it. A few days later he called back and squashed the idea, Kravitz writes.
“Lisa Bonet is pregnant,” Cosby stated, “but Denise Huxtable is not.”
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Following the call, Cosby, who’s a convicted sex offender, allegedly wrote the actor out of the series. After the birth of Kravitz and Bonet’s baby, Zoë Kravitz, was born he allowed her to return to The Cosby Show.
“But from then on, her relationship with Bill was tense and ultimately untenable,” Kravitz writes.
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Kravitz wrote that the incident caused so much strain for Bonet that she left the show in 1991, citing creative differences. Unlike other cast members, she was not invited back for the series’ finale.
If there was a sliver of a doubt the type of person Cosby is, you can pile this on all the other heinous things he’s done to people. The Family Medical Leave Act and the Federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act both prohibit employers from terminating employees for pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions.
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