Inside ‘The Cosby Show’ Alum Geoffrey Owens’ Life Out of the Spotlight: Financial Struggles and More

Geoffrey Owens took a step back from the limelight after his starring turn on The Cosby Show.

Owens joined The Cosby Show in 1985, playing Sondra Huxtable’s then-boyfriend, Elvin Tibideaux. Sondra (Sabrina Le Beauf) and Elvin eventually tied the knot onscreen, later welcoming twins Winnie and Nelson.

“It was, like, my first television job, and I had no idea what I was walking into,” Owens recalled during a December 2024 radio appearance on V-103 Atlanta. “When I joined the show, I didn’t know anything about the show. I never watched it [and] I didn’t know what the characters’ names were, who the actors [were], nothing. I walked in, like my character, Elvin, walked in, just clueless.”

Owens further stated that he never paid attention to the sitcom’s “hype.”

“I was a serious New York actor. I was a theater actor, so I didn’t care about television ratings and stuff,” he said on the radio show. “I never paid any attention to it, so a lot of the time that I was on the show, … I wasn’t really in that world as much as a lot of the other guys were. I was part of the family, but I was on the periphery of it.”

After The Cosby Show wrapped in 1992, Owens continued acting in the likes of The Paper, Built to Last, Stonebrook, Law & Order, The Cross and a bit part on his Cosby costar Raven-Symoné’s That’s So Raven series.

Despite appearing in various other one-off TV roles, Owens quietly took on a second job working as a cashier at a Trader Joe’s grocery store in New Jersey. Owens’ side hustle went viral in September 2018, which even surprised his coworkers.

“It took a number of weeks for it to dawn on some of my colleagues. ‘Weren’t you that guy, or so and so?’” Owens exclusively told Us Weekly at the time. “Another coworker told them, but they didn’t know, so it took about three or four weeks before the staff at my store wholly knew my past and who I was.”

According to Owens, his coworkers chose to remain “discreet” about his acting career.

“They just decided they would either let me tell people or people would find out on their own,” Owens explained. “It was interesting. I guess within a month or so, everyone pretty much knew. Every day I worked there, at least one or two people recognized me.”

Owens applied to work at Trader Joe’s after he stopped receiving any Cosby Show residuals when the show was pulled from syndication in light of Bill Cosby’s misconduct scandal. He quit his cashier job after going viral, pursuing acting full-time again.

“The outpouring of love and support, and practical support in the form of employment as well, has been extremely generous and much appreciated,” Owens told Us in December 2019. “Tyler [Perry] is leading the way, of course, with that offer of work on The Haves and the Have Nots. Nicki Minaj was very generous and gave me a very generous gift, which I then turned over to the Actor’s Fund of Actor’s Equity. I made a donation to them of her generous gifts.”

He continued, “NCIS: New Orleans offered me some work right off of that. And as well as the offers, I was able to actually just have the opportunity to audition for a number of things that I got work on through auditions just because of the opportunity.”

While Owens is back to booking regular film and TV roles, he’s still faced financial hardships.

“I still struggle to make a living,” Owens said on V-103 Atlanta in 2024. “I struggle every day to make ends meet, and people can’t get their heads around that because they see me in movies. They don’t understand the specifics of how my industry works.”

Owens has also remained close to several of his former Cosby Show costars since the show wrapped. After Malcolm-Jamal Warner died in July 2025, Owens told Us about their bond.

“He was generous too,” Owens said of Warner. “I did a theater project long ago and asked him to participate, and he was there for me. My heart goes out to his family.”

He added, “This tragedy has almost left me speechless. Malcolm was a lovely man, a sweet and sensitive soul. I respected him for many reasons, including the fact that he genuinely loved the act of creation. He had the mind of an actor and the heart of a musician.”