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Chelsea Handler: Bill Cosby “Tried to Cosby Me” in Atlantic City

Chelsea Handler and Bill Cosby
Chelsea Handler claimed in an interview with Esquire that Bill Cosby once invited her up to his hotel room, but that she was uncomfortable meeting him alone

Chelsea Handler is very firmly not on Team Cosby. During a recent interview with Esquire for the mag’s “Women & Men” issue, the comedienne shared that Bill Cosby once invited her up to his hotel room in Atlantic City, N.J.

Handler, 40, was chatting with her fellow April 2015 cover star Nick Offerman and interviewer Scott Raab when the Cosby Show alum’s name came up, prompting Raab to remark, “Poor guy.” 

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“What do you mean ‘poor guy’?!” the Chelsea Lately alum replied. “Not poor guy — he tried to Cosby me.”

She went on to recount her own alleged encounter with the embattled star, who has been accused by more than two dozen women of rape or sexual assault. (Cosby’s lawyer denies all of the allegations against him.)

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“Oh, I was in Atlantic City playing, doing stand-up, and he was doing stand-up in Atlantic City in the same hotel, and at like three o’clock in the afternoon, someone from the hotel came down and said, ‘Oh, you know, Mr. Cosby would really like to meet you up in his hotel suite,'” she recalled. “And I thought, ‘That’s really weird.'”

Nick Offerman and Chelsea Handler Esquire cover

Handler claims the meeting occurred around 10 years ago, and that it immediately raised several red flags in her mind since she didn’t know him. “I said, ‘That’s really weird. I don’t want to go alone,'” she told Esquire. “So the three guys I was with — thank God these guys were with me. One was filming and one was like a producer; we were filming something — I brought them up with me to his room and thank God I did, because now I know what would’ve happened if I went up there alone.”

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Handler put the incident out of her mind until recently, when the allegations against the actor started to pile up.

“Then my friend texted me the other day saying, ‘Do you remember that night we went up to, or that afternoon we went up to Bill Cosby’s and you were so freaked out you made us come with you?'” she shared. “And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Hello! You could’ve been one of his victims if we weren’t there.’ And I went, ‘Oh my gosh…’ So yeah, he’s guilty. I think it’s pretty obvious now.”

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Cosby, for his part, has stayed mostly mum on the scandal, choosing instead to let his lawyer speak on his behalf. He did, however, release a video message to fans this month about his comedy tour. “Yes, I’m going to be in Wheeling, West Virginia, Capitol Music Hall,” he said in the clip on March 9. “8 o’clock show, that’s right. You know I’ll be hilarious. Can’t wait.”

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