Bill Cosby sued by former NBC intern for 1984 drugging, groping and sexual assault

A former NBC intern claims that Bill Cosby drugged, groped and may have raped her while she was unconscious after a cast party of his highly successful family sitcom, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Jennifer Watling said in her suit that when she was an NBC intern in 1984 — and Cosby was known as the “Greatest Television Dad” whose show became No. 1 in ratings five years in a row — the disgraced comic befriended her.

“Cosby fostered a mentoring and fatherly relationship with Ms. Watling at the studio where ‘The Cosby Show’ was filmed,” according to the suit.

He included her in cast meetings on the set and was generally “warm and welcoming,” Watling said.

After the recording of one episode, the comedian invited her to a cast party at the studio where she said she was struck by a severe headache.

Cosby offered her two pills that he said were aspirin and she took them.

“The pills that Cosby gave to Ms. Watling were not aspirin, but rather were an unknown intoxicant that had the ability to (and did) incapacitate Ms. Watling,” she claimed in court papers.

She said that she blacked out during the party and when she woke up, Cosby was groping her.

“When Ms. Watling awoke, (she) was lying on the couch in Cosby’s dressing room at the studio where ‘The Cosby Show’ was filmed, with Cosby next to her, fondling her breasts under her shirt,” according to the suit.

Watling blacked out again and when she came to she was lying naked in the bed of a man whom she believes was with Cosby at the party, she said.

“She physically felt as though she had been vaginally penetrated while incapacitated,” she charged in the suit.

A spokesman for Cosby did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Watling, who is suing under the Adult Survivors Act, left NBC in September 1984, the same month that the show premiered. The New York law gives victims until Nov. 24 this year to file a claim for past sexual abuse.

The network did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The 85-year-old Cosby, who was a pioneering black comic and actor, was sued by nine women in Arizona in June who claimed the same behavior as Watling.

He has been accused by no fewer than 60 women of similar behavior and served three years in a Pennsylvania prison after he was convicted in 2018 for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman.

The conviction was overturned in 2021 by the state’s highest court, which found that the prosecutor had violated Cosby’s civil rights by trying him after promising not to bring a criminal case against him in exchange for testimony in a civil case.

Watling’s lawyer Jordan Merson has set up a web page reaching out to Cosby’s sexual assault victims.

The attorney did not return a call for comment.

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