Earlier this year, former model Beverly Johnson came forward and accused Bill Cosby of drugging her in the mid-’80s during an audition. In her recounting of the incident, she said that after Cosby gave her a drink, she started to feel drowsy, but did not completely pass out, as he attempted to assault her. But once she resisted, she said, he threw her out of the house and into a taxi.
“Cosby said he wanted to see how I handled various scenes, so he suggested that I pretend to be drunk. (When did a pregnant woman ever appear drunk on The Cosby Show? Probably never, but I went with it.) As I readied myself to be the best drunk I could be, he offered me a cappuccino from the espresso machine,” Johnson wrote in a Vanity Fair article. “I told him I didn’t drink coffee that late in the afternoon because it made getting to sleep at night more difficult. He wouldn’t let it go. He insisted that his espresso machine was the best model on the market and promised I’d never tasted a cappuccino quite like this one.”
That’s when she realized she was drugged. “I was a top model during the 70s, a period when drugs flowed at parties and photo shoots like bottled water at a health spa. I’d had my fun and experimented with my fair share of mood enhancers. I knew by the second sip of the drink Cosby had given me that I’d been drugged—and drugged good,” she wrote.
Johnson said she then cursed Cosby.
“You are a [motherf—cker] aren’t you?” she said she told him.
It was then that he dragged her out of his home and threw her into a taxi, Johnson said. It took days for her to recover from whatever drug he’d given her, she said.
On Wednesday, Johnson was interviewed on Good Morning America to promote her memoir, The Face That Changed It All, and was asked what would she say to Cosby today.
Johnson, 62, answered, “I forgive you.”
Of the more than 40 women to accuse Cosby of drugging and assaulting them, Johnson is the first one to publicly forgive him. But she still hopes that other women who say they were victimized receive some sort of justice.
“I’m going to leave that to the Justice Department,” Johnson said in her GMA interview. “I just feel that he’s a lightning rod for a much bigger conversation, and that conversation would be the rape culture in America.”