Phylicia Rashad & the Legacy of Clair Huxtable: Poise, Purpose and Cultural Impact
Was there ever a more impeccably dressed, perfectly coiffed, beautifully mannered TV mom than Phylicia Rashad‘s Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show? Atop that, Clair was a successful lawyer, sang fit to duet with Stevie Wonder, proudly spoke her mind and celebrated her heritage, took no B.S. from her kids … and still seemed like the most fun and loving mom on the block.
Clair was modeled after series star and co-creator Bill Cosby‘s real-life wife Camille, who convinced her husband to turn the Huxtables — who had originally been conceived of as having the more working-class occupations of detective and limo driver, then detective and housewife — into humble but successful professionals. Cosby himself handpicked Rashad for the role and knew he’d made the right choice when he saw how the naturally elegant actress handled scenes in which the Cosby kids needed a scolding. No hot tempered screeds for this TV mom. Instead, Rashad delivered a perfectly effective takedown with just a raised eyebrow or a few carefully chosen, calmly delivered, velvet hammer words — the latter often boasting sly comic flair.
Everett Collection
But did Mrs. Cosby and Mrs. Rashad have much in common, since the actress’ delivery was so effortlessly spot-on? “My best friend from college came to a taping and said, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’” Rashad said in a 2023 interview. “Taking these people’s money for being yourself!” And Rashad agreed, saying she valued the role for Clair’s family celebrating her education and intellect, and how much her unflappable nature tempered the Cosby crazy.
Rashad earned two Emmy nominations, won two NCAAP Image Awards for her work on The Cosby Show and garnered the title “Mother of the Black Community” at the 2010 NAACP ceremony. Even as Bill Cosby’s personal life fell into turmoil, she was able to separate the cast’s good work and the series’ trailblazing impact on the television landscape.
“I loved those years,” Rashad, now 76, told Bustle magazine in 2020. “It was such a creative time, and a collaborative time. It was a high, high time. It was a great time. And it gave people in the world a lot.”
To celebrate TV’s most fun, fearless and feisty mom of the ’80s and beyond, here are a few more facts about the woman who played her.
1 She enjoys playing moms — just don’t label them “Black moms”
Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
The same traits that made Rashad memorable as Clair Huxtable have also made her a natural fit in a host of other maternal roles. Among them, Rashad earned a Tony award for her portrayal of proud but downtrodden Chicago mama Lena Younger in the 2004 stage revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, and an Emmy nomination playing the same character in a 2008 TV adaptation. She starred as Adonis Creed‘s adoptive mom, Mary Anne, in 2015’s Creed and its two sequels. In 2019, Rashas played Beth Pearson’s mom Carol Clarke in the smash drama This Is Us. And most recently, she turned in a heartbreaking performance as a swindled military mom in the 2024 thriller The Beekeeper. But make no mistake — to this mom of son William and daughter Condola, a mother is a mother, no matter what shade her skin. “I didn’t think about myself as being a Black mother. I’m a mother,” she told Bustle. “I didn’t think about my children being Black children; I think of my children being children.”
2 Rashad briefly married into the Village People
Art Zelin/Getty Images
In 1978, then Phylicia Ayers-Allen married Victor Willis, a founding member and former lead singer of the enduring pop novelty act the Village People. The duo met while performing on Broadway in The Wiz. Willis also wrote music and lyrics for Phylicia’s only album, Josephine Superstar, a disco flavored tribute to Josephine Baker on which the Village People sang backup. The pair split in 1982.
3 Her third husband proposed on live TV
NBC/courtesy Everett Collection
Rashad had just finished cohosting NBC’s coverage of the 1985 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade when her then beau, ex NFL star Ahmad Rashad, flummoxed his co-announcers when he asked her to marry him during the halftime show of the Jets-Lions game he was covering. NBC personnel tracked down Phylicia who said yes on camera, too. Three weeks later, Bill Cosby walked his TV wife down the aisle to become the real wife of another man.
4 Rashad served as a dean at her alma mater
In 1970, Rashad graduated magna cum laude from the esteemed Howard University, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Fifty-one years later, she returned to serve as dean of the school’s Chadwick Boseman College of Fine Arts, named for another actor alumnus, Chadwick Boseman, who passed away from colon cancer at age 43 in 2020. She stepped down from the role in 2024.
5 She made her Broadway directorial debut this year
John Nacion/Getty Images
An award-winning veteran of the Broadway stage, Rashad made her directorial debut on the “Great White Way” in spring of 2025, helming Tony-winning playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins new work, Purpose, about a modern Black family grappling with the current state of civil rights efforts and their impact on each member’s life. “This is really what it is: in a family, the patriarch of iconic status, and how does a successive generation find their purpose?” Rashad explained to NPR. “The problem is they don’t have something to coalesce around. They don’t have a civil rights movement to coalesce around. So what do we have?”
Remind 
TVs Top Moms
May 2022
Celebrate top TV moms from the ’50 to the ’90s including 8 things you didn’t know about Donna Reed plus weird and wacky TV moms.
Buy This Issue