It’s been a week since Geoffrey Owens, actor and former supporting player on The Cosby Show, was outed as having a day job in an article from The Daily Mail. And it’s been quite a rollercoaster. What started out as an invasion of privacy quickly turned into a supportive love-in.
And now, according to an exclusive interview he gave to The Hollywood Reporter, it might mean an unexpected career resurgence. The actor — whose recent screen credits include episodes of Elementary and The Blacklist — was spotted working at Trader Joe’s by someone who took the story (and a picture of him) to the U.K. paper.
Owens says he knew the story was coming when a reporter contacted him a few days before it went live. He then quit his job and prepared for things to get bad.
“I imagined the worst-case scenario to brace myself, and it somehow managed to be worse than I expected,” Owens told THR. “It was mean-spirited. … I am a very private person, but I chose this life, so I accepted it. I didn’t feel any impulse to lash out, but I was devastated. Fortunately, that didn’t last very long when all the support came in.”
When the story went viral over the weekend, the tide quickly turned his way. Untold actors took to social media to show their support, often pointing to the blue collar jobs they held down while looking for sometimes elusive work.
Since then, Tyler Perry has come forth, offering him a job. Owens told THR that he’s fielding a “whole handful” of offers, on top of getting back in touch with fellow Cosby Show alumni like Keshia Knight Pullman, Malcolm Jamal-Warner, and Sabrina Le Beauf.
When asked if he’d return to Trader Joe’s, he reportedly didn’t hesitate by answering “yes.” His branch, he said, has even held the position open for him, in case he ever needs it. In the meantime, the ordeal has helped challenged the assumption that actors, even famous ones, are always employed or always with money.
“I don’t want to be presumptuous and say because of my situation, we’ve started a change, but I think it is certainly less shameful to admit that we are all working people who do what we need to do,” Owens said.
