Phylicia Rashad Was Totally Misquoted, Okay!

Seen above making her way to a post office box to mail the mortgage check that is probably going to bounce thanks to the conspiracy that is ruining her residuals*, Phylicia Rashad is doing a little bit of backtracking after her comments about the Bill Cosby scandal went everywhere yesterday. Phylicia needs an Olivia Pope in her life to teach her how to properly clean up a mess, because she’s not so good at backtracking.

At a luncheon for the movie Selma in NYC the other day, Phylicia was asked about the Bill Cosby allegations by Showbiz 411’s Roger Friedman and he claims that she said “forgot those women” and went on to say that she believes the allegations from the 20 plus women are all part of an evil conspiracy to destroy a legacy. Phylicia tried to clarify her comments during an interview with ABC News. She played the “misquoted” card and if really wanted to play that card, she should’ve said, “We were at a luncheon! What I really said was, ‘Forget this low-mein. It’s inedible!'”

Phylicia never said, “forget about these women.” What she did say is that this entire situation is not about the alleged victims, it’s about the destruction of Bill Cosby’s legacy.

“I am a woman. I would never say such a thing. I would never think such a thing. My message is, what happens to a nation in which people knowingly and willfully disavow the tenets that describe the nation? … This is not about the women. This is about something else. This is about the obliteration of a legacy.

Speaking to the character of the man that I know, this has not been easy. This has not been easy at all but he’s not a coward. I don’t know what he will do in that way but I know that he won’t be hiding. … He likes being around people too much and he respects people.”

Okay, so she didn’t say “forget these women.” What she meant to say is that we need to pull the women off the stage, put them in a corner somewhere, throw a blanket over them, put some potted plants in front of them and dim the lights over there so we can go back to what’s really important: weeping over the fact that reruns of her old show aren’t showing on TV Land anymore.

Phylicia also claims that money has nothing to do with her defending Bill Cosby. She says that the residual checks get smaller the longer a show is in syndication.

Roger Friedman later responded to Phylicia’s claim that she was misquoted. He says that he didn’t misquote her, but her words were taken the wrong way.

Let me clear something. I did not misquote Phylicia Rashad. But she didn’t mean for it to be taken the way it was, and I should have punctuated. There was NEVER the meaning in ‘Forget those women’ that she was saying to actually forget or dismiss then. She meant, ‘those women aside’– as in, she’s not talking about that, she’s talking about Cosby’s legacy being destroyed. It was conversational. Somehow this got twisted. I am really sorry if the way I presented it made it seem like either one of us was forgetting anyone.

Isn’t “those women aside” a more polite way of saying “forget those women“? It’s like if I called someone an ugly bitch and after they got upset about it, I said, “You took my words out of context! What I meant is that you’re an unattractive meanie. Gosh!”

But glad we could clear that up, Phylicia!

* She’s not doing this. It’s jokes.