‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ premiere: Keshia Knight Pulliam on Bill Cosby, firing, more
There were moments where the premiere of “The Celebrity Apprentice” was extremely entertaining, but also a few were it was also incredibly awkward. Hearing about Bill Cosby in the context of charitable donations definitely falls into the latter category, mostly because of recent history, and some of the allegations against him being such that no charity would want to be associated with him.
As we noted both last night and in our recent podcast for the premiere, though, this episode was actually filmed back in March 2014, long before some of that news came to light. Therefore, Keshia Knight Pulliam not calling her former TV dad for a little help had nothing to do with anything reported in the press; instead, she told “The Today Show” that her lack of a relationship with the man at present was more of the reason behind it:
“I know ‘The Cosby Show’ is in reruns, and everyone thinks that we’re this family that has dinner every Friday night … But the reality was I hadn’t spoken to Mr. Cosby. I felt that it would be tactless, very rude to call someone and be like, ‘Hey, so, let me have some money right now.'”
Pulliam did also address the recent headlines related to the Cosby allegations, and spoke only from her own personal experiences with him:
“What I can say is this: I wasn’t there … No one was there except for the two people who know exactly what happened. All I can speak to is the man that I know and I love.”
Pulliam handles most of this interview well, but that’s no real surprise given that she handled getting kicked off pretty well last night. You could argue that maybe she wasn’t cutthroat enough to win the competition, but we feel like had she not stepped up to be Project Manager, she’d probably still be there.
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