Chelsea Handler has provided some extra details about an encounter she had with Bill Cosby earlier in her career, where the controversial star invited her to his hotel room.
Speaking on a recent episode of The Big Podcast, Handler explained a bit more about the situation to hosts Shaquille O'Neal and Adam Lefkoe, plus Johnny Knoxville and Tiffany Hadish.
After reflecting on once looking up to Cosby before the experience of meeting him, and before the allegations against him surfaced, Handler said she took a male comedian who was opening up for her to meet Cosby at his room in Atlantic City, as well as a security guard.
“He opens the door, and he doesn't see the two guys I'm with,” she recalled. “He's like, ‘Hey,’ and he’s got that jello pudding smile.”
“And then the door (opens wider) and reveals I’m with two men, and his face turns, and it’s an upside-down frown,” Handler claimed. “It was not the smile. Then, he was a real asshole. And we got up and left five minutes in. He was going off on my opener because he was opening for a woman.”
Handler then explained that several sexual assault allegations came out months later. “Six months later, all the stories came out,” she said. “My opener calls me, and he’s like, ‘Now we know why Bill Cosby was in such a bad mood.’ Little does Bill Cosby know, but a roofie wouldn’t have done shit to me. I've done every drug, and I'm still standing by.”
It wa in a 2015 interview with Esquire that Handler first opened up about the situation, alleging that the disgraced Cosby Show star “tried to Cosby me.”
“Oh, I was in Atlantic City playing, doing stand-up, and he was doing stand-up in Atlantic City in the same hotel, and at like three o’clock in the afternoon, someone from the hotel came down and said, ‘Oh, you know, Mr. Cosby would really like to meet you up in his hotel suite,'” she shared. “And I thought, ‘That's really weird.’ This was like 10 years ago. And I said, ‘That's really weird. I don't want to go alone.’ I go, ‘I don't know him.'”
“So the three guys I was with — thank God these guys were with me. One was filming, and one was like a producer; we were filming something — I brought them up with me to his room, and thank God I did, because now I know what would’ve happened if I went up there alone,” Handler added.
Bill Cosby was convicted of aggravated indecent assault in 2018, though that conviction was overturned in 2021 on procedural grounds. He has denied the allegations made against him.
