{"id":2389,"date":"2008-11-12T09:12:42","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T09:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/interview-phylicia-rashad-of-t.html"},"modified":"2008-11-12T09:12:42","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T09:12:42","slug":"interview-phylicia-rashad-of-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/interview-phylicia-rashad-of-t.html","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Phylicia Rashad of &#8216;The Cosby Show&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my all-time favorite television moms was Phylicia Rashad as the ever-capable, ever-glamorous, ever-wise, and ever-beautiful Clair Huxtable, lawyer, mother of five, and wife of the ever-bemused Cliff Huxtable.  It was a joy to speak with her about this week&#8217;s 25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition of the complete series on DVD.<br \/>\n<em>What inspires you?<\/em><br \/>\nOh, I have a well of inspiration to pull from.  My mother, my father, my sister, all the teachers I have ever known, and my friends, all of these inspire me.  And the practices in which I engage every day, the practice of meditation in which I engage every day.  I look in nature in wonder at what nature is and what she does and how she does it, and realize that myself and all people are a part of it and that is very inspiring to me.<br \/>\n<em>How did you come to be cast as Clair?<\/em><br \/>\nI had a series of auditions, and at the time it was thought that she would be bi-lingual.  When I was 13 my mother took us to live in Mexico City for a semester and I learned my capacity to learn a foreign language and later studied Spanish, and it helped me in the audition.  Later I asked Mr. Cosby, &#8220;Why did you cast me?&#8221;  He was twirling his cigar, and said, &#8220;By the look in your eye when you told Theo to shut up, that was the eye of a mother.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>What&#8217;s next for you?<\/em><br \/>\nI am in Halle Berry&#8217;s next film, a drama.<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nDo you have a favorite episode?<\/em><br \/>\nLove them all.  I loved the one when all members of the family assumed different characters to teach Theo a lesson about money, Theo&#8217;s prom, the girls with their hair blown all over creation, that was funny as all get-out.  I loved the episode with Christopher Plummer and Roscoe Lee Browne delivering Shakespeare in the living room.  The opening credits were a production in themselves, something we looked forward to doing each year.<br \/>\n<em>What makes you laugh?<\/em><br \/>\nMy nieces and nephews.  I take great joy in them.  Time with my friends.  I have a wonderful group of women friends and I love it when we get together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my all-time favorite television moms was Phylicia Rashad as the ever-capable, ever-glamorous, ever-wise, and ever-beautiful Clair Huxtable, lawyer, mother of five, and wife of the ever-bemused Cliff Huxtable. It was a joy to speak with her about this week&#8217;s 25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition of the complete series on DVD. What inspires you? Oh,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebrities","category-dvds","category-entertainment","category-television"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Interview: Phylicia Rashad of &#039;The Cosby Show&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/interview-phylicia-rashad-of-t.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interview: Phylicia Rashad of &#039;The Cosby Show&#039;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of my all-time favorite television moms was Phylicia Rashad as the ever-capable, ever-glamorous, ever-wise, and ever-beautiful Clair Huxtable, lawyer, mother of five, and wife of the ever-bemused Cliff Huxtable. 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Oh,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/interview-phylicia-rashad-of-t.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-12T09:12:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nell Minow\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Interview: Phylicia Rashad of 'The Cosby Show'","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/11\/interview-phylicia-rashad-of-t.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Interview: Phylicia Rashad of 'The Cosby Show'","og_description":"One of my all-time favorite television moms was Phylicia Rashad as the ever-capable, ever-glamorous, ever-wise, and ever-beautiful Clair Huxtable, lawyer, mother of five, and wife of the ever-bemused Cliff Huxtable. 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