Geoffrey Owens Says Bill Cosby's Legal Issues Affected His Finances

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Geoffrey Owens Explains How Bill Cosby’s Legal Issues Affected His Finances

Surprise, surprise—Bill Cosby‘s unseemly ways are partly to blame for Geoffrey Owens‘ time at Trader Joe’s.

The Cosby Show actor made headlines after an overzealous fan spotted him working at the grocery store, took a picture, and sold it to the tabloids. Folks proceeded to mock Owens for having to work at the company, but thankfully, Tyler Perry and more came to his rescue.

Now Owens says it was Cosby’s sexual assault scandal that led him to Trader Joe’s.

From PEOPLE: “Owens, 57, had been receiving royalties from The Cosby Show for years. But when Cosby, 81, was accused and later convicted of sexual assault, reruns were pulled from syndications, and the checks stopped coming. ‘Yes, it impacted me financially,’ Owens exclusively tells PEOPLE. ‘At the time that the show was pulled, that did make a difference in our income. That was one of the elements that led to my getting to the place where I said to myself, ‘I have to do something’ and I was thinking, ‘What can I do?’ and the answer ended up being Trader Joe’s, which is actually a wonderful situation for me in many ways. But I got to the point, I just had to do something to support myself and my family.’”

Owens told the publication he was really embarrassed by the whole ordeal: “I felt really humiliated,” Owens said about the photo. “From the time that I heard that the article might be done to the time it came out, I tried to envision the worse case scenario just to prepare myself and then it was just a little bit worse. If that was possible. They went out of their way to find the very worst picture of me, in the worst shirt and the worst posture. The words they used to describe me were so demeaning. It hurt.”

Click here to read his interview in full.