Actor Geoffrey Owens from The Cosby Show has revealed that he’s been “struggling to make ends meet.”
Owens recently appeared on the Big Tigger Morning Show on V-103 Atlanta and spoke about the viral situation he experienced in 2018 after photos leaked of him bagging groceries at Trader Joe’s.
“I quit Trader Joe’s actually before the news hit,” Owens revealed. “It was strange because someone had been in the store taking pictures. … And I was like, well now that this is breaking, I’m not going to feel comfortable working in this store wondering who’s around with a camera. It’s gonna be just too weird. I’m a very private person.”
“It wasn’t like I quit knowing I would be making a lot of money soon or anything,” he added. “I just felt like I wasn’t going to be able to handle that kind of scrutiny, that kind of attack on my privacy.”
Owens then explained how life changed for him after people learned that he worked there — detailing how Tyler Perry offered him a role on The Haves and Have Nots and Nicki Minaj gifted him $25,000 which he decided to donate to charity because “at the time, it seemd like the right thing to do.”
The actor then admitted that he’s “asked for hours to work there again” at Trader Joe’s. “Even today, right now, as we speak, I still struggle to make a living. I struggle every day to make my ends meet,” Owens said. “And people can’t get their heads around that because they see me in movies, whether it’s Mr. Santa or, you know, I’m on Poppa’s House on CBS. All the TV shows I’ve done and all that stuff.”
“People have the impression that, ‘Well, you’re making a lot of money. What’s the problem? Why would you have financial troubles?’ They don’t understand the specifics of how my industry works,” he continued.
After radio show host Big Tigger inquired about the residual checks that Owens should be receiving from The Cosby Show, the actor let him know that they weren't helping him that much. “People have a false impression of what the average, what I call, middle-class actor makes and their ability to make a living in the industry,” he explained. “So that’s what drove me to work at Trader Joe’s to begin with. Honestly, I’m not much better off now than I was then.”