After several years of being in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, Bill Cosby is planning a comeback.
The 85-year-old comedian is looking to make a return to the stage in 2023.
During an interview with WGH Talk, Cosby said he's ready to start touring and telling jokes again.
"Yes, because there's so much fun to be had in this storytelling that I do," he said. "Years ago, maybe 10 years ago, I found it was better to say it after I write it."
Cosby's publicist Andrew Wyatt confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the one-time TV star is serious about returning to stand-up comedy -- and soon.
"We're looking at getting back out here around Spring/Summer of 2023," Wyatt said.
The last time Cosby toured was in 2015, months after two dozen women came forward with claims that the comedian sexually assaulted them decades earlier, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In December 2015, he was ultimately arrested and charged with assaulting Andrea Constand, director of operations for Temple University's women's basketball team, who initially reported him to authorities in 2005.
Cosby became the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era when a Pennsylvania jury in 2018 found him guilty of drugging and molesting Constand.
Cosby served just shy of three years of a 10-year sentence when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out his conviction and ordered his release in June 2021.
The court pointed to Cosby's Fifth Amendment rights, citing a 2005 agreement with then Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, who declined to file charges at the time. The court said Castor made a deal with Cosby and his defense team that basically stripped Cosby of his rights by forcing him to sit for a deposition in a civil case, implicating himself in the crime. Some of that deposition was the basis for the charges that were ultimately filed against Cosby. The state high court called the situation an "affront to fundamental fairness," saying that Cosby had reason to believe he would never be charged criminally when he sat for the deposition.
The Montgomery County District Attorney's office asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision and reinstate Cosby's conviction, but in March 2022 the court rejected the case, without explanation.
Cosby has denied all allegations against him.
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