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CNN SPOTLIGHT

CNN Spotlight: Beverly Johnson

Aired December 21, 2014 - 19:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beverly, Beverly!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN HOST: Beverly Johnson took a risk in a world of cutthroat competition.

BEVERLY JOHNSON, FORMER SUPERMODEL: The agency that I was with, the owner said you'll never be on a cover. Who do you think you are?

PHILLIPS: But Beverly Johnson was a trailblazer.

JOHNSON: I was very determined to be a great model. I just didn't let anything deter me.

PHILLIPS: She became the first black face on the cover of the fashion industry's bible.

JOHNSON: I was on top of the world.

ANDRE LEON TALLEY, FORMER VOGUE EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Beverly's cover was history. It was groundbreaking.

JOHNSON: I started to see how that cover impacted the world.

PHILLIPS: Now, 40 years later, she is once again making headlines. This time revealing a painful secret.

JOHNSON: I knew that I had been drugged, and I knew that I had been drugged by Bill Cosby.

TALLEY: She is, for me, the most credible voice in this terribly tragic saga.

PHILLIPS: So, who is this person? And why is she breaking her silence after three decades of burying the past?

JOHNSON: I realized that what a hypocrite I would be if I didn't say something.

PHILLIPS: Tonight, we focus our CNN Spotlight on Beverly Johnson.

Every day, Beverly Johnson is receiving e-mails of support and gratitude like these. "As a therapist, I praise you for your willingness and courage to speak out." "I see you as a role model and a catalyst for much-needed change." "Often we as women give our power away by remaining silent."

JOHNSON: I'm here today to reclaim my power.

PHILLIPS: The power Beverly Johnson alleges she lost to Bill Cosby nearly 30 years ago. Her story revealed in "Vanity Fair" is hauntingly similar to those told by numerous other women which Cosby's denied.

JOHNSON: The women coming out and telling their story, I would just look at that television and just think how brave they are.

PHILLIPS: And now the same is being said of her by friends, strangers, even a federal judge.

"I have so many of these cases on my docket, and they get dismissed because victims are afraid to testify. I'm so proud of you for coming out."

JOHNSON: One friend that I called and I told her what happened, that I was drugged by Cosby, and she started to tell me her story of sexual abuse. And I was like, you never told me this before. Why didn't you ever tell me this? She said, Beverly, I'm only telling you now because you told me your story. It lets me know I'm doing the right thing.

PHILLIPS: Doing the right thing wasn't a choice growing up. It was expected. A Buffalo, New York, native born into an ethnic rich heritage: a Black Foot Indian and Louisiana Creole, Beverly was the middle child of six kids strung together by ambition, discipline, and a subtle dose of humor.

JOHNSON: Oh, it was crazy. I had a household that no one could swear, no one could raise their voice. You know, we couldn't fight with each other.

SHEILA, JOHNSON'S SISTER: Dinner was on the table at 4:30, and because dinner was on the table at 4:30, we all had to be home.

JOHNSON: My father was very, you know, disciplinarian.

SHEILA: He was kind of strict. Very strict. We weren't, you know, we didn't date.

JOHNSON: You just didn't do anything.

PHILLIPS: Which really meant do what you can without getting caught.

JOHNSON: We would make sign languages. You know?

PHILLIPS: Egg each other on.

JOHNSON: You know, at the dinner table and making, like, funny expressions that only we would know.

PHILLIPS: Beverly's older sister, Sheila, remembers no one was safe from the practical jokes.

SHEILA: There weren't a lot of pictures of Beverly. She was the middle child. I used to tease Bev that she was adopted, and we would go in and get these papers and show her. And she didn't really look like any of us. And she was a child from Mars; we used to call her the Martian from Mars.

JOHNSON: I was like one of those weird kind of people. I loved school. I loved to read. I still love to read. It's just who I am.

PHILLIPS: And when her nose wasn't buried in a book, it was submerged in water.

JOHNSON: I loved to swim. That was my solace.

SHELIA: She was very serious. She made cheerleading. She wanted to swim in the Junior Olympics.

JOHNSON: I was just competing. Just one thing after the other. And you don't even know that you're competing for the Olympics until they tell you you didn't make the Olympics by a quarter of a second. It was like, I didn't even know that was even out there, an option.

PHILLIPS: Despite her success in the pool, her parents kept her humble and were never shy to throw in a life lesson.

Do you remember a moment where Mom or Dad said to you, Beverly, you're going to do something great? We just have a feeling.

JOHNSON: No. I remember my mom saying, you have to go to school, and here's one -- don't bring any children here because I raised my children already.

PHILLIPS: Mom made it clear, you weren't getting pregnant.

JOHNSON: Don't bring them here, you know?

PHILLIPS: But Johnson wasn't thinking of starting a family.

JOHNSON: I always wanted to go to school, anyway, so did all my sisters and brothers. So we didn't -- there was never really a struggle like, oh, I want to find myself, you know?

PHILLIPS: She did manage to find herself. On campus at Northeastern University in Boston.

Why did you want to be a lawyer?

JOHNSON: I think that I saw on television the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King. I remember, you know, that black and white television set and watching, you know, the dogs attacking the people. There was just something about the injustice of that that I wanted to address as a lawyer.

PHILLIPS: But it's not in a courtroom that Beverly Johnson will fight for equality. Next, taking race to the runway and making history.

TALLEY: It was like the civil rights moment of high fashion.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: In the summer of 1970, 17-year-old Beverly Johnson had just finished her freshman year of college and was on the hunt for a summer job.

JOHNSON: My girlfriends in college said, why don't you become a model? And they literally showed me the magazine. The girl standing with her hands on her hip and they make $75 an hour. I said, are you kidding me?

PHILLIPS: Not exactly the career path her parents envisioned for their daughter, a gifted student on a full scholarship at Boston's Northeastern University.

JOHNSON: My parents really stressed education a lot.

PHILLIPS: So dad was worried.

JOHNSON: "Modeling?" You -

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: He's like, absolutely not. My mother had to convince my father that there was such a thing as a model.

PHILLIPS: But despite her father's objections, Johnson and her mother headed to New York anyway, hoping for that big break in the Big Apple's world famous Fashion District.

JOHNSON: I had to wear heels and I remember, you know, the blisters on my feet because of walking up and down, you know, these streets in high heels. You know, trying to, you know, do whatever it took to become a model.

TALLEY: She is very much the way the American girl next door, except she's black. And that's what carried over into fashion world.

PHILLIPS: Andre Leon Talley, contributing editor at Vogue magazine, says Johnson's beauty was universal.

TALLEY: What people loved about her, I think, was her down-to-earth practicality and her natural beauty.

PHILLIPS: And it didn't take long for the fashion world to take notice.

Tell me about that first moment when you came into this area and you walked into "Glamour" magazine. Do you remember that moment?

JOHNSON: Oh, yeah, sure, I remember it like it was yesterday -- with my mother. They came out, said, Beverly -- to my mother, of course -- we love your daughter, we love her look, we want to take her on a 10- day modeling assignment to Fire Island for Glamour magazine.

PHILLIPS: Did you just hear Glamour magazine and think, oh my gosh?

JOHNSON: Yes, that was exciting. It was exciting. And I can remember going back home and telling my brothers and sisters. And my brother's like, did you tell them you have better looking brothers and sisters at home? They wanted you?

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: Top modeling agencies wanted Johnson, too. She signed with the renowned Ford Modeling Agency. And by 1972, she was a Glamour cover girl.

Beverly, what did it feel like to be here in New York? I mean, at the top of your game?

JOHNSON: It really felt great. I mean, you know, that song is true. You can make it here --

PHILLIPS: You'll make it anywhere.

JOHNSON: It's really true. You know, I had a real sense of accomplishment. And I was on top of the world!

PHILLIPS: A world she was about to change in ways she never expected.

TALLEY: You can say whatever you want. There would not be African- American models running up and down these runways and around the world without the past that the pioneer woman Beverly Johnson was. She was the American black pioneer.

PHILLIPS: Becoming the first black supermodel. A trailblazer with endless tenacity.

JOHNSON: I wanted a Vogue cover. I didn't know at the time there hadn't been a person of color on the cover.

PHILLIPS: Her agent and mentor, Eileen Ford, told her it just wouldn't happen.

Why didn't she think you would get that?

JOHNSON: I don't know. I never asked.

PHILLIPS: So instead, she paved her own way and went to a new agency, Wilhelmina Models. They believed Vogue was within her reach, and they were right. In 1974, 21-year-old Beverly Johnson became the first black model ever on the cover of the world's most prominent fashion magazine.

TALLEY: It was, like, the civil rights moments of high fashion. And everyone was excited. Beverly Johnson on the cover?! no, we can't have B. Hello? Did you see the cover of Beverly Johnson? History's being made. It was a big, big moment.

PHILLIPS: Why was it so important?

JOHNSON: Because that's every model's dream to be on the cover of Vogue. You have arrived when you made the cover of Vogue. And then when I found out I was the first person of color on the cover and what that meant, I was like, wow, this is really a big deal.

PHILLIPS: Then came another first. Four years after Johnson's historic cover, another dream came true. Motherhood.

What was it like to have that baby girl? It changed your life.

JOHNSON: My daughter is everything to me. I love her so much. That's really a defining moment in one's life is to become a mother.

PHILLIPS: And while Johnson's family was growing, so was her career. She ventured into TV and film.

When did you decide to make this transition from modeling to acting?

JOHNSON: Well, I started acting because I knew that the modeling career was short. So I just decided to try everything.

PHILLIPS: A gamble that paid off. She landed her first lead role in the 1979 film, "Ashanti," right alongside Michael Kaine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNSON: Would you rather have remained in England, Doctor?

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PHILLIPS: But even in the middle of all that success came a vicious blow. A bitter custody battle over her daughter, Anansa.

JOHNSON: I had been -- just got out of a marriage. Divorce is really awful to go through. It was, you know, devastating. Absolutely devastating.

PHILLIPS: Johnson appeared to have lost her footing. But then came what appeared to be a chance to put a new spark in her professional life. An audition for a wildly popular sitcom starring comedian Bill Cosby.

That audition came at a time where you needed something to make you feel good.

JOHNSON: Well, I think that anybody that gets a call to come down, try to be on the Bill Cosby Show would be excited.

PHILLIPS: Excited because he was an icon and a trailblazer, crossing racial boundaries in television. Much like Johnson had done in fashion.

JOHNSON: He was not only an icon in black America, but, you know, in America.

PHILLIPS: When we come back --

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JOHNSON: The room started to spin. My speech was slurred.

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PHILLIPS: Beverly Johnson says the audition revealed a terrifying side of Bill Cosby.

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JOHNSON: I just kind of cocked my head because at that point I knew he had drugged me.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Beauty is a fickle business. And models have just a short time at the top.

JOHNSON: I didn't know what I was going to do after modeling, which was supposed to have been a four, five year career. So I just decided to try everything.

PHILLIPS: For Beverly Johnson, auditioning for the highly rated Cosby Show could open up possibilities.

JOHNSON: There wasn't a bigger figure in entertainment in the entertainment industry than Bill Cosby.

PHILLIPS: But she didn't get a role. The audition, she says, ended with a traumatic event.

JOHNSON: I knew that I had been drugged, and I knew that I had been drugged by Bill Cosby.

PHILLIPS: It was a secret she kept for decades, fearing repercussions.

JOHNSON: There is this powerful man in an industry that I would like to be a part of, and I didn't think I had a chance of winning.

PHILLIPS: But that would change as more than a dozen women went public this fall, giving Johnson the courage to come forward.

Tell me about that moment when you said, all right. I'm going to do it. I am going to let the secret be revealed.

JOHNSON: When all of this happened, you know looking at the women coming forward, and how brave they are. I had to speak up. I just had to. But I vacillated. I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it, I'm not going to do it. And I realized that what a hypocrite I would be if I didn't say something.

PHILLIPS: So she wrote a first-person account for Vanity Fair. "Bill Cosby drugged me." "For a long time, I thought it was something that only happened to me, and that I was somehow responsible. So I kept my secret to myself, believing this truth needed to remain in the darkness."

Johnson also spoke at length on CNN's NEW DAY.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNSON: He needed to know that, as women we just weren't going to just, you know, stand by and let him get away with what he thought he was going to get away with.

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PHILLIPS: She recounted Cosby inviting her to his Manhattan brownstone for an audition. The role of a patient of the lovable obstetrician, Dr. Cliff Huxtable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL COSBY, ACTOR: This is my office.

RAVEN-SYMONE, ACTRESS: What do you do?

COSBY: I'm a doctor for women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Before they rehearsed, Cosby insisted she drink a cappuccino from his fancy espresso machine.

JOHNSON: It was very powerful. It came on very quickly. The room started to spin, my speech was slurred, and he placed his hands on my waist. At that point, I knew he had drugged me. And I was just looking at him, and I just asked him the question that you are a mf, aren't you?

PHILLIPS: She says it went no further, but does say a seething Bill Cosby dragged her to the street and sent her home in a cab. "As I thought of going public, a voice in my head kept whispering, black men have enough enemies out there already. They certainly don't need me fanning the flames."

JOHNSON: It was a very difficult for me to come to the point where I wanted to speak out.

PHILLIPS: What's the one thing you'll always remember from that moment when you say that he drugged you? What's the one thing you'll never forget?

JOHNSON: I think it would be someone taking your power because you're powerless.

TALLEY: She is, for me, the most credible voice in this terribly tragic saga.

PHILLIPS: Andre Leon Talley, Johnson's long time colleague in the fashion industry, sees her going public as part of a bigger story.

TALLEY: Beverly has not had exactly what you would call a perfectly gold-plated existence. But at the same time, she's a survivor. She has struggled, she's maintained her dignity.

PHILLIPS: Cosby's lawyer wouldn't comment on Johnson's allegations, but in previous statements, he's defended his client's innocence. "These brand-new claims about alleged decades-old events are becoming increasingly ridiculous. And it is completely illogical that so many people would have said nothing, done nothing, and made no reports to law enforcement or asserted civil claims if they thought they had been assaulted over a span of so many years."

JOHNSON: I don't want to see anything happen to Bill Cosby. What I want to see happen is that women come out and speak their truth.

PHILLIPS: Speak the truth. Johnson also brings that message to the Barbara Sinatra Center for abused children, where she is a board member and active volunteer.

BARBARA SINATRA, FOUNDER, THE BARBARA SINATRA CHILDREN'S CENTER: It's an ugly subject. Child abuse is ugly. No one likes to talk about it.

PHILLIPS: She helps teen girls grappling with their own secrets and self-esteem.

SINATRA: And that's part of being a model, self-esteem. And that's what these children need.

JOHNSON: Some of them somehow got the courage to come forward and tell somebody what's been happening to them. It's far worse than my story. Far worse than my story. But how brave they are.

PHILLIPS: Johnson, more than ever, sees silence has an enemy and believes that troubling accounts about a beloved celebrity can lead to bigger questions about who we are and who we want to be.

JOHNSON: This is the lightning rod for this conversation about, you know, violence against women. And some good comes out of it. Some good comes out of it.