“The Cosby Show” actor Geoffrey Owens said he's still struggling to make ends meet after he was forced to quit his job at a Trader Joe's grocery store amid an “attack on my privacy.”
Owens, best known for his role as Elvin Tibideaux on the six-time Emmy Award-winning series, claimed he is “no better off” today than he was when a customer snapped a photo of the actor working behind the grocery store register in 2018.
“Even today, as we speak, I'm still struggling to make a living,” Owens told Atlanta radio station V-103 on December 18. “I struggle every day to make ends meet. And people can't understand it because they see me in movies.
Owens' remaining screenings “weren't great at all” as he only acted in “maybe 20% of the shows” on the hit series.
“People have a false impression of what the average middle-class actor does and their ability to make a living in this industry,” Owens said.
The Yale graduate and son of former New York Congressman Major Owens got a “regular” job and went unnoticed until he was photographed working at Trader Joe's.
“Initially, there was some negative stuff about the job defamation. Where is he now,” Owens told V-103. “But very soon after that, there was all this support and encouragement from around the world.”
Owens was concerned about his invasion of privacy, so he left the job before this new gig was made public.
“It was weird because someone was in the store taking pictures,” Owens recalls. And I said, now that this is critical, I wouldn't feel comfortable working in this store wondering who's got a camera. It will be very strange. I am a very private person.
“It wasn't like I stopped knowing that I was going to be making a lot of money soon or anything. I felt like I wouldn't be able to handle that kind of scrutiny and attack on my privacy.”
When the news broke, an outpouring of support came his way.
Nicki Minaj sent him $25,000 but Owens donated the money to a charity because “it wasn't right to keep it” without working with it.
But he has happily accepted work on dozens of projects, including acting gigs with powerhouses like Tyler Perry on “The Haves and the Have Nots,” the 50-Cent-produced show “Power” and “Power Book II: Ghost.”
Owens currently stars in the CBS comedy series Poppa's House, starring Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr.
The actor admitted that after the headlines died down, he went back to Trader Joe's while acting and asked for more watches because money was and still is tight.
He said that Bill Cosby, the star of the sitcom, and his fall from grace after numerous allegations of sexual misconduct led to the series being pulled from syndication and affected Owens' bottom line.
The three-time Golden Globe winner “The Cosby Show” was pulled from syndication on multiple networks in 2014 after Cosby was accused and eventually convicted of sexual assault — which he denied.
The man officially known as America's Father served three years of a 10-year prison sentence until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2021.
“Yes, it affected me financially. At the time the show was pulled, it made a difference in our income,” Owens told People magazine in 2018.
During his interview with V-103, he reiterated that his remains “disappeared” after the Bill Cosby scandal.
