Actor Bill Cosby is reportedly mentally preparing himself for prison following his conviction on charges of drugging and sexually assaulting a women, according to the New York Post’s Page Six.
Cosby also invoked the name of Nelson Mandela, the former South African president who spent 27 years in prison for conspiring to overthrow the country’s apartheid rule.
“I think back to the time when (wife) Camille and I went to visit Nelson Mandela in South Africa. He was a free man, but I remember when we met him at Robben Island where he had been in a prison for all of those years. I sat in that cell where he lived, and I saw how he lived . . . what he had to eat to live and what he went through,” he told the publication last year.
“So, if they send me to that place, then that’s what they will do, and I will have to go there.”
Page Six didn’t previously report the comments as Cosby and the outlet had an agreement that nothing could be shared publicly during the legal proceeding.
Cosby also said he refused a plea deal because he didn’t “do what they said I did.”
“When there was talk of a plea bargain, I said no,” Cosby told Page Six. “I just refused to plead guilty to something that just didn’t happen. It didn’t happen, and Andrea knows that, and I think [prosecutors] know that.”
“Why take a deal?” he said. “Not when they want me to say that I’m a sex offender. I didn’t do what they said I did.”
Cosby also told Page Six, "when they send me to that place, I want you to be there to tell my story because it seems no one is listening, no one wants the real story."
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