The Cosby Show Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
47 free The Cosby Show trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
44 free The Cosby Show trivia questions with answers. The Cosby Show topped the Nielsen ratings for five straight seasons and revived the sitcom in the 1980s. This quiz covers the Huxtables from top to bottom: obstetrician Cliff and lawyer Clair, the five children, Theo's dyslexia storyline, Cockroach, Elvin and the sweaters, plus the behind-the-scenes stories - Vanessa Williams and Whitney Houston nearly being cast, the New York shoot, the 'Kiss Me' theme and Bobby McFerrin, and the spin-off A Different World set at Hillman College. Easy questions ask where the family lives and what Cliff does for a living. The hard ones want the fictional street address, the original blue-collar jobs Cosby pitched and which future Oscar winner appeared in A Different World's first season. It suits a nostalgia quiz or a 1980s-TV round. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the series, its characters and its spin-off, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which future Grammy-winning singer appeared on The Cosby Show at age four as one of Rudy's sleepover guests?
Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys, billed under her birth name Alicia Cook, was among the children at Rudy's slumber party, where Cliff keeps order with games such as bouncing each guest on his knee like a bucking bronco.
Q 02On which network did The Cosby Show air?
NBC
NBC said yes after ABC turned the show down, and the hit carried NBC from also-ran to first place in prime time.
Q 03What is Cliff Huxtable's profession?
Obstetrician
Obstetrician: Cosby had planned a blue-collar father until his wife Camille argued for professional parents like the Cosbys themselves, so he gave way and made Cliff a doctor.
Q 04What is Clair Huxtable's profession?
Lawyer
Lawyer: an earlier idea made Clair a Dominican who burst into Spanish when angry, a reversal of I Love Lucy, but it was dropped before the pilot was taped.
Q 05Who played Clair Huxtable?
Phylicia Rashad
Phylicia Rashad won the part with a look: in her screen test she stopped arguing with the boy playing her son and simply stared at him, and Cosby declared her his Clair.
Q 06In which New York City borough is the Huxtable home set?
Brooklyn
Brooklyn was the Huxtables' home on screen and the early seasons were taped in the borough too, but the brownstone shown from the street really stands across the river in Manhattan.
Q 07Rudy Huxtable was first written as a boy; which child actor was the front-runner for the part?
Jaleel White
Jaleel White, later Family Matters' Steve Urkel, was the favourite until auditions were opened to girls and a four-year-old won the producers over, so Rudy became a daughter.
Q 08In The Cosby Show's pilot, what does Cliff use to show Theo how far a pay cheque without college really goes?
Monopoly money
Monopoly money: Theo ends up broke, pleads to be loved as he is and wins applause from the studio audience, until Cliff answers that it is the dumbest thing he has ever heard.
Q 09Which real-life issue did Theo's storyline explore, inspired by Cosby's son?
Dyslexia
Dyslexia: Cosby's son Ennis was diagnosed at college and his grades took off, so Cosby wrote it into the show, with Cliff and Clair made to face their years of blaming Theo's marks on laziness.
Q 10Who played Theo Huxtable?
Malcolm-Jamal Warner
Malcolm-Jamal Warner auditioned on the last day of the search and played Theo as a smart-aleck, until Cosby asked if he would speak to his own father that way; his second reading won the part.
Q 11Who played Rudy, the youngest Huxtable?
Keshia Knight Pulliam
Keshia Knight Pulliam was four at her audition and kept staring at a studio monitor, asking the director how he had put her on the TV; charmed, he moved her to the top of his list.
Q 12Who played Vanessa Huxtable?
Tempestt Bledsoe
Tempestt Bledsoe took a finance degree at New York University and in 1995 fronted a daytime talk show of her own, later saying roles were scarce because casting people still saw her as twelve years old.
Q 13Which future star played toddler Olivia Kendall from season six?
Raven-Symone
Raven-Symone was three when she auditioned for Cosby's film Ghost Dad and was judged too young for it; he liked her so much that he found her a part on his sitcom instead.
Q 21Which singer auditioned to play Sondra Huxtable the year before her debut album came out?
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston did not get the part, which went to a Yale-trained actress; months later her first album arrived and she went on to seven number-one singles in a row.
Q 22Cliff Huxtable was a medical doctor, but Bill Cosby held a real doctorate in which field?
Education
Education: Cosby took the degree at the University of Massachusetts in 1976, with a dissertation on using his own cartoon series, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, as a teaching aid in schools.
Q 23Which jazz vocalist recorded The Cosby Show's season-four theme a year before his own number-one hit?
Bobby McFerrin
Q 14On The Cosby Show, which character marries eldest daughter Sondra Huxtable?
Elvin Tibideaux
Elvin Tibideaux and Sondra come back from their honeymoon with a shock for her parents: instead of going on to medical school and law school, they plan to open a wilderness supply store.
Q 15What nickname does Theo Huxtable's best friend go by on The Cosby Show?
Cockroach
Cockroach, played by Carl Anthony Payne II, arrives in an episode where he and Theo face a test on Macbeth that neither has read, and rent a recording of the play rather than open the book.
Q 16Which music star invites the Huxtables into his recording studio after his car collides with theirs?
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder plays himself in the 1986 episode 'A Touch of Wonder', making up for the crash with a recording session at which he sings 'I Just Called to Say I Love You' with Clair and the family.
Q 17Clair Huxtable's maiden name was borrowed from Bill Cosby's wife Camille; what is it?
Hanks
Hanks: Camille Cosby was born Camille Hanks, and the borrowing ran through the family tree, with Cliff's parents Anna and Russell named after Cosby's own mother and brother.
Q 18Which production company, founded by two former ABC executives, made The Cosby Show?
Carsey-Werner
Carsey-Werner was new: Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner had left ABC to go independent, their old network passed on the Cosby pitch, and the hit set them up to make A Different World and Roseanne.
Q 19Before his wife Camille talked him out of it, what job did Bill Cosby plan to give Cliff Huxtable?
Limousine driver
Limousine driver: Cosby liked the stories a chauffeur could tell and the free daytime hours at home with the children, but Camille insisted on professional parents, and Cliff became a doctor.
Q 20Harvard's Alvin Poussaint was hired to review The Cosby Show's scripts; what was his profession?
Psychiatrist
Psychiatrist: Poussaint, who studied the effects of racism, read the scripts and storylines so that the Huxtables came across as a healthy, realistic Black family and not a set of old sitcom stereotypes.
Bobby McFerrin sang it for a single season, because the show re-recorded its theme in a new style most years; within a year his 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' was at number one.
Q 24The spin-off A Different World was built around which Huxtable daughter?
Denise
Denise left for college and a series of her own in 1987 but lasted only one season there: she was written out and came home to the Huxtable household.
Q 25What is the fictional historically Black college in A Different World called?
Hillman College
Hillman College, placed in Virginia, is also where Cliff and Clair studied and where Cliff's father went before them, which is why a Huxtable daughter enrols there.
Q 26After Lisa Bonet left, A Different World centred on which two characters?
Whitley Gilbert and Dwayne Wayne
Whitley Gilbert and Dwayne Wayne, a rich Southern belle and a fast-talking maths whiz, fell into a love-hate romance, and their eventual wedding became a major event of the series.
Q 27Who took over A Different World as producer-director in 1988, drawing on her own years at Howard University?
Debbie Allen
Debbie Allen, sister of the actress who played Clair Huxtable, sent the writers to Atlanta's Black colleges every spring to meet students and staff, and many storylines grew out of those visits.
Q 28Which future Oscar winner played Maggie Lauten in the first season of A Different World?
Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei played one of the few white students on the mostly Black campus and was dropped in the overhaul after that first year; her Oscar for My Cousin Vinny came five years later.
Q 29Why was A Different World's original lead character written out after only one year?
The actress's real-life pregnancy
The actress's real-life pregnancy: Lisa Bonet was expecting a child with her husband Lenny Kravitz, and the producers would not make her character an expectant student, so she was sent home to the parent show.
Q 30During which national event did The Cosby Show's series finale air in 1992?
The Los Angeles riots
The Los Angeles riots were in their second day when the finale went out, and Cosby took to the air to ask people to stop the violence and watch the farewell episode instead.