Remy Danton
All Star
Can you believe The Cosby Show turns 30? September 20, 1984 the very first episode aired. I was just a little girl a few months shy from my 8th birthday. I can not recall if I remember seeing this episode when it aired or if I remember it when I got older but I do know that I have seen all 202 episodes of one of the best black shows.. scratch that, one of the BEST TV SHOWS ever. It was the one show my parents let me tune in every week to watch.
Since I deputized myself as the BIGGEST fan of the show, I was pretty surprised (and tickled) to see that there were things I did not know about the show that mentalfloss.com brought to our attention. Check it out:
1. HUXTABLE: LIMOUSINE DRIVER?
In Bill Cosby’s original pitch, he played a limousine driver, and Clair was a union plumber. Camille Cosby told her husband that she thought the TV couple should be more representative of their own family—two white-collar professional parents. When executive producer Marcy Carsey sided with Camille, Cosby capitulated and made the patriarch a doctor and Clair an attorney.
2. “MIRA QUE TIENE COSA LA MUJER ESTA…”
Another one of Cosby’s early visions of the show was for Clair to be Dominican, and to have her revert to her native Spanish whenever she was frustrated. He pictured it as a reverse I Love Lucy scenario, where the audience always knew when Ricky Ricardo had reached his limit because he’d burst into a Spanish-language tirade.
3. PHYLICIA RASHAD'S STARE HELPED GET HER THE ROLE
Of all the actresses who auditioned for the role of Clair, Phylicia Rashad caught Cosby’s eye because of the way she argued with Theo during the screen test. Unlike the previous candidates, she didn’t wag her head and she didn’t place her hand on her hip. Instead, she simply stopped speaking and gave Theo a look—and her eyes said enough to frighten any child into submission. Cosby knew immediately that Phylicia was Clair.
4. COSBY WORRIED ABOUT THE STUDIO AUDIENCE'S REACTION TO THE PILOT
The Cosby Show's pilot was filmed in front of a live audience, and even though there were plenty of laughs where expected, Cosby was worried that the audience wasn’t embracing his overall vision of the series. In the scene where Theo is defending the “D” on his report card, he earnestly tells his dad, “If you weren't a doctor, I wouldn't love you less, because you're my dad. So rather than feeling disappointed because I'm not like you, maybe you should accept who I am and love me anyway, because I'm your son.”
What concerned Cosby about this scene was the spontaneous applause from the audience after Theo’s speech. Luckily the audience reacted even more enthusiastically when he replied with complete conviction, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life!”
5. THE STORY BEHIND THOSE SWEATERS
Cliff Huxtable’s iconic sweaters were the work of Dutch fashion designer Koos Van Den Akker. Van Den Akker was asked by an customer of his in the early 1980s to make a unique sweater as a present for her friend, Bill Cosby. Cosby wore that sweater on camera while filming an episode of his show. Mail poured in as viewers wanted to know where they could buy a similar garment.
Cosby asked Van Den Akker to make more, and a legacy was born. The sweaters' designer described the process of creating each pullover as a “painting,” throwing various colors and patterns of fabric pieces together on a jersey/wool blend canvas. According to Van Den Akker, each design tread a “very thin line between absolutely awful and something of genius.”
6. THERE WERE ORIGINALLY ONLY FOUR HUXTABLE CHILDREN
At one point in the pilot, Clair asks, "Why did we have four children?" He responds, "Because we didn't want five." Originally, Denise was the oldest of the offspring, followed by Theo, Vanessa, and Rudy. But once the series was poised to become a hit, Bill Cosby decided to add an additional older child—one who was away at college and was an example of successful parenting. Enter Princeton student Sondra, the eldest Huxtable child.
7. IN REAL LIFE, SONDRA COULDN'T HAVE BEEN CLAIR'S DAUGHTER
Sabrina LeBeauf, the actress who played Sondra, is only 10 years younger than her TV mom. Sabrina won the role over such staunch competitors as Whitney Houston and future Miss America Suzette Charles. LeBeauf impressed Cosby partly because she had recently graduated from a prestigious university (Yale), just like the character he had in mind.
8. ITALIANS COULDN'T PRONOUNCE "HUXTABLE"
The Cosby Show not only topped the ratings charts at home, it was also a hit internationally—albeit with some minor tweaks made for non-U.S. audiences. For example, in Italy, the surname “Huxtable” proved to be impossible to pronounce, so the family’s name was changed and the show was titled I Robinson ("The Robinsons") in Italy. Why “Robinson” instead of, say, Smith or Jones? The name was chosen in honor of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball.
) .....clair as a dominican union plumber tho 
him because he sounds like he was a really good dude to that cast.
