“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, known for his role as Elvin Tibideaux on the six-time Emmy-winning series, claimed he’s “not much 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, right now, as we speak, I still struggle to make a living,” Owens told Atlanta’s V-103 radio station on Dec. 18. “I struggle every day to make my ends meet. And people can’t get their heads around that because they see me in movies.
Owens’ residual checks “were never particularly wonderful” because he only acted in “maybe 20% of shows” on the hit series.
“People have a false impression of what the average middle-class actor makes and their ability to make a living in the industry,” Owens said.
The Yale University graduate and son of former New York congressman Major Owens took a “regular” job and went mostly unnoticed until he was photographed working at Trader Joe’s.
“At first, there was some negative stuff about basically the job shaming. A ‘where is he now’ kinda thing,” Owens told V-103. “But then, very soon after that, there was all this support and encouragement from all over the world.”
Owens was worried about his invasion of privacy, so he left the job before this new gig went public.
“It was strange because someone had been in the store taking pictures,” Owens recalled. And I was like, now that this is breaking I’m not going to feel comfortable working in this store wondering who is around with a camera. It would just be too weird. I’m a very private person.
“It wasn’t like I quit knowing I would be making a lot of money soon or anything. I just felt like I wasn’t going to 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 “didn’t feel right to keep it” without working for it.
But he gladly accepted work in dozens of projects including acting gigs with powerhouses like Tyler Perry on the show “The Haves and the Have Nots” and the 50-Cent produced show “Power” and “Power Book II: Ghost.”
Owens currently stars on the CBS sitcom “Poppa’s House,” starring Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr.
The actor admitted that after the headlines calmed down, he went back to Trader Joe’s while acting and asked for more hours because money was — and is — still tight.
Bill Cosby, the star of the titular sitcom, and his fall from grace after numerous allegations of sexual misconduct led the series to be pulled from syndication and affected Owens’ bottom line, he said.
The three-time Golden Globe-winning “The Cosby Show” was pulled from syndication on several networks back in 2014 after Cosby was accused and eventually convicted of sexual assault — which he denied.
The man formally known as “America’s Dad” served three years of a 10-year prison sentence until Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2021.
“Yes, it impacted me financially. At the time that the show was pulled, that did make a difference in our income,” Owens told People in 2018.
During his V-103 interview, he reiterated that his residuals were “gone” after Bill Cosby’s scandal.
