The Cosby Show star Geoffrey Owens will appear in an upcoming episode of The Pitt, nearly 10 years after he was photographed working as a grocery store cashier.
In 2018, pictures of Owens, 63, scanning groceries at a New Jersey Trader Joe’s store circulated online. He recently explained at Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards that he took the job during a period of “unemployment and debt” in an attempt to “hang in there with my [acting] career.”
It seems the actor’s perseverance has paid off, as he landed a guest-starring role on next week’s episode of HBO Max’s Emmy-winning medical drama, The Pitt, as Dr. Clay Barrett, a cardiothoracic surgeon.
Owens is best known for playing Elvin Tibideaux, the hard-working husband of Sondra Huxtable (Sabrina Le Beauf), on seven seasons of the Bill Cosby-led family sitcom, from 1985 to 1992.
Following his breakout role, he has gone on to make minor appearances in a slew of TV shows, including Disney Channel’s That’s So Raven, the apocalyptic drama The Leftovers and the long-running sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Owens has also starred in several films, such as The Paper (1994), Fatale (2020), Somewhere in Queens (2022) and Mr. Santa: A Christmas Extravaganza (2024).
He later addressed the viral pictures of him as a Trader Joe’s employee in a 2024 interview on the Big Tigger Morning Show.
“It was strange because someone had been in the store taking pictures… And I was like, well, now that this is breaking, I’m not going to feel comfortable working in this store, wondering who’s around with a camera,” he said, adding that he quit the job before the images were published. “It’s gonna be just too weird. I’m a very private person.”
After the photographs surfaced, the actor was offered a role on Tyler Perry’s OWN drama The Haves and Have Nots. He was also gifted $25,000 by rapper Nicki Minaj, which he ultimately gave to charity.
“Right now, as we speak, I still struggle to make a living,” Owens added in 2024. “I struggle every day to make my ends meet. And people can’t get their heads around that because they see me in movies, whether it’s Mr. Santa or, you know, I’m on Poppa’s House on CBS. All the TV shows I’ve done and all that stuff.
“People have the impression that, ‘Well, you’re making a lot of money. What’s the problem? Why would you have financial troubles?’ They don’t understand the specifics of how my industry works,” he said.
New episodes of The Pitt premiere Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO Max.
