Whitney Houston turned down ‘The Cosby Show’ for singing career

London: Whitney Houston was offered the lead role in ‘The Cosby Show’ but she turned it down because it would have affected her future as a singer.

The show’s director Jay Sandrich has revealed that before she became known as an international music superstar, Houston was chosen for the role of Sondra Huxtable on the hit show. She auditioned in the early eighties but after getting the job she refused to take it up so that she could pursue her music career. Sandrich, who directed the first three seasons of the hugely successful sitcom, recalls a young Houston reluctant to sign her contract because she thought it would jeopardize her not yet developed music career. “So we gather in this room and there are kids from New York and Los Angeles and they are all signing their contracts, and this girl who we brought from New York said ‘I can’t sign this contract’”, the Daily Mail quoted him as saying. “And I said ‘Why?’ She said, ‘Well, I want to be a singer...I can’t be in every show... I have to be in every tour,” he said. Sandrich says that he then asked Houston if she had a recording contract or whether she had ever toured to which she replied ‘no’ to both. “I said ‘Well who told you can sing?’ and she said ‘My mother, my aunt’,” he added. Sandrich believes that the then teenager knew right there and then that she was going to be a huge singing star. ‘Whitney Houston, she knew,’ he said. ANI