Roseanne Barr on Bill Cosby: 'No one is surprised'

Maria Puente | USA TODAY

Groundbreaking comedian Roseanne Barr says Hollywood women knew about allegations that the "great comic" Bill Cosby sexually assaulted multiple women over the years, but no one said anything.

Now she's saying something, on Access Hollywood.

"We all heard it for a long time, and it surprises nobody," she said flatly, during an interview on the set Wednesday of Cristela where she was guest-starring.

"We all know women who know somebody, if they didn't go through it themselves with Bill Cosby," she said. "There are hardly any women — hairdressers, waitresses, working women — who don't know somebody (affected by the allegations)."

But until a man said it, nobody paid attention, she added.

The man in question is comedian Hannibal Buress, who condemned Cosby as a "rapist" during a performance in Philadelphia, Cosby's hometown, in October.

When a video of Buress calling out Cosby was posted on Philadelphia Magazine's website, it went viral, thus directing new attention to old allegations first made public nearly 10 years ago.

Now everybody's talking about Cosby, after more than two dozen women have come forward in the past three months to accuse him of drugging and raping them in episodes dating to the late 1960s.

Barr is not alone. Comedian Patton Oswalt also says the Cosby allegations were well known among comics.

"It was a very badly kept secret in the comedian world, and a lot of us would talk about it. (Comedian/documentarian) Bobcat Goldthwait would mention it all the time," he said on the You Make It Weird podcast with Pete Holmes in December.

Barr, who took heat on Twitter last year for joking about the Cosby allegations, is taking the matter more seriously now. She says she's not given up hope that Cosby could repair some of the damage, including by compensating his accusers.

"I have hopes for this great comic," she said. "I think he could make it clean, make it right. I think he could do that. There are so many ways — he's got a billion bucks."

He could do a lot for himself just by "saying I'm sorry," she said.

She also tweeted about "redemption."

Barr isn't the only comedian sounding off on Cosby, nor even the only one Thursday. Here's what some of them have to say:

Larry Wilmore

He took on Cosby on the second night of his new show, The Nightly Show on Comedy Central, and he wasn't kind.

"He was never a hero of mine," he told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview Thursday. He said he started disliking the comic after his mother met Cosby at a tennis tournament in San Diego in the late '70s or early '80s and he was "so mean, so nasty" when she asked for an autograph.

"My opinion of Cosby at that point was like, "What a jerk." I never even watched The Cosby Show. I always thought, 'That's great that that show is on,' but about him I was like, 'Whatever, Cosby.' Richard Pryor was my hero."

Chris Rock:

"I don't know what to say. What do you say? I hope it's not true. That's all you can say. I really do. I grew up on Cosby. I love Cosby, and I just hope it's not true," he said in an interview with Frank Rich on the Vulture blog in November.

Kevin Hart

"Right now, it's a lot of speculation. All I can do is just say my prayers, and my wishes go out to all of the women who are potentially involved. His personal life has nothing to do with me. I can't control it. I will never try. It doesn't stop me from being an admirer of his work. His work and his personal life are two separate things," he told THR in an interview Jan 14.

Jerry Seinfeld

"I was very upset, very upset. Still upset. I don't know what to make of it, but it's just upsetting," he said to People in December.

Jay Leno

"I don't know why it's so hard to believe women. You to go Saudi Arabia and you need two women to testify against a man. Here you need 25," Leno said last week at a conference in of the National Association of Television Program Executives.

Patton Oswalt

"The Bill Cosby thing is so...awful, and what's worse for comedians is a lot of us have known for a long ...time...And (the women accusers) they had to sit there for decades while this guy did this over and over again, didn't lose any sleep, was beloved, and even now, everything is being taken away from him, but at worst he lives in comfy seclusion for the last years of his life. He lives in absolute luxurious exile for the rest of his life. That is one of the horrors of life," he said in a podcast with Pete Holmes in December.