Netflix Blocked ‘BoJack Horseman’ from Going After Bill Cosby Just Before His Downfall

BoJack Horseman creator and showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg tried to call out Bill Cosby’s behind-the-scenes sexual misconduct before Hannibal Buress brought national attention to the open secret, but Netflix wouldn’t let him target one of the biggest monsters in Hollywood.

Considering the subject matter of BoJack Horseman, it’s no surprise that, early in the show’s run, Bob-Waksberg wanted to address the dark, complicated legacy of Cosby despite the general public’s hesitance to do the same. After all, BoJack Horseman told the story of a 1990s sitcom star whose private life and late-career reputation didn’t match his onscreen personality, and it’s hard to think of a single TV star who better exemplifies that juxtaposition than Dr. Cliff Huxtable. So, when Bob-Waksberg and his writers were planning the show’s second season in late 2014, it only made sense for them to use their satirical dramedy about show business to address Cosby’s then-little-discussed litany of sexual assault accusations.

When the BoJack Horseman Season Two episode “Hank After Dark” eventually aired in July 2015, long after Cosby’s decades of sex crimes became public knowledge, viewers understood that the titular talk show host and not-so-secret sexual predator Hank Hippopopalous was supposed to be a satirical representation of Cosby. But as Bob-Waksberg revealed in a recent BoJack Horseman retrospective with The A.V. Club, the original idea for the episode was much more pointedly directed at Cosby before Netflix put their hoof down.

In “Hank After Dark,” BoJack’s biographer Diane makes an offhand remark during a book reading about how her subject’s substance abuse, selfish streak and general douchebaggery pales in comparison to the much more explicitly criminal behavior of other beloved male entertainers whose careers never suffered because of their misdeeds, listing celebrities such as Mike Tyson, Woody Allen, Bill Murray and the fictional 1990s star Hank Hippopopalous as examples. 

While BoJack Horseman never explicitly explains what exactly Hank Hippopopalous did to earn the many accusations against him, Diane’s description of “all his former assistants have made the same allegations” clearly suggests sexual misconduct. However, as opposed to how the Cosby case played out in the real world, the general public and the news media sided with Hank Hippopopalous despite Diane’s best efforts to draw attention to his bad behavior.

“When we were developing it originally, it was much more sharp and satirically targeted at specifically Bill Cosby,” Bob-Waksberg said of “Hank After Dark,” adding that, just as Diane’s efforts to expose the fictional character’s bad behavior were met with powerful pushback, BoJack Horseman’s corporate overlords didn’t like the idea of smearing the name of America’s Dad. “I remember Netflix really pushed back on that. At the time, I was really annoyed with that note because I thought, ‘Oh, Netflix is developing something with Bill Cosby. They’re covering their asses. This is so obnoxious that we have to water this down and make it a more general pastiche.’”

But thanks to the similarly offhand remarks made by stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress during a show in Philadelphia on October 16, 2014, Cosby’s crimes became national news while Bob-Waksberg and his team were still working on “Hank After Dark” and the rest of BoJack Horseman Season Two. “While we were developing the episode, all the Bill Cosby stuff came out and suddenly everyone was talking about it. It was no longer this thing that weirdly people don’t talk about. By the time the episode came out, we weren’t breaking any news. Everyone’s talking about Cosby.”

Despite his initial anger at Netflix forcing him to tone down his criticisms, Bob-Waksberg says that the censorship was a blessing in disguise. “I was like, oh, thank God we made this a little more general because if this was just about Bill Cosby, people would be like, ‘What are they talking about, this guy that gets away with everything? (Cosby’s) about to go to jail,’” Bob-Waksberg said of the storyline. “So, now I’m really grateful — that was a really good note. And the truth is there were other guys like that.”

We’re still waiting for those “other guys” to get their own comeuppance — just don’t expect to see it on Netflix.