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  "slug": "clair-huxtable",
  "title": "Clair Huxtable",
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  "lead": "Clair Olivia Hanks Huxtable is a fictional character from the American sitcom The Cosby Show (1984–1992). Portrayed by actress Phylicia Rashad, Clair, the wife of Cliff Huxtable and mother of their five children, is the matriarch of the show's central Huxtable family. Working as a lawyer, Clair values the importance of maintaining a successful career and strong household simultaneously. The character debuted alongside most of her family in the pilot episode, \"Theo's Economic Lesson\", which premiered on September 20, 1984. Created by comedian Bill Cosby, Clair is based on Cosby's own wife, Camille. Cosby intended for the character to be a plumber, but the producers and Camille ultimately convinced him to rewrite her into a lawyer to reflect a family that closer resembled their own. At one point, Clair had also been envisioned as a Dominican housewife who speaks Spanish when frustrated, inspired by Ricky Ricardo from the sitcom I Love Lucy, but this idea was also abandoned. Rashad, credited as Phylicia Ayers-Allen, won the role by exhibiting a subtlety in her audition that other candidates lacked. After marrying husband Ahmad Rashad and adopting his surname, Rashad became pregnant with their child during the show's third season, thus requiring her to conceal her pregnancy during episode tapings.…",
  "body": "Clair Olivia Hanks Huxtable is a fictional character from the American sitcom The Cosby Show (1984–1992). Portrayed by actress Phylicia Rashad, Clair, the wife of Cliff Huxtable and mother of their five children, is the matriarch of the show's central Huxtable family. Working as a lawyer, Clair values the importance of maintaining a successful career and strong household simultaneously. The character debuted alongside most of her family in the pilot episode, \"Theo's Economic Lesson\", which premiered on September 20, 1984. Created by comedian Bill Cosby, Clair is based on Cosby's own wife, Camille. Cosby intended for the character to be a plumber, but the producers and Camille ultimately convinced him to rewrite her into a lawyer to reflect a family that closer resembled their own. At one point, Clair had also been envisioned as a Dominican housewife who speaks Spanish when frustrated, inspired by Ricky Ricardo from the sitcom I Love Lucy, but this idea was also abandoned. Rashad, credited as Phylicia Ayers-Allen, won the role by exhibiting a subtlety in her audition that other candidates lacked. After marrying husband Ahmad Rashad and adopting his surname, Rashad became pregnant with their child during the show's third season, thus requiring her to conceal her pregnancy during episode tapings. Typically playing straight woman to Cosby's humorous Cliff, Rashad's character began to adopt more comedic material during the show's second season, although she maintains her disciplinarian status within her own household. Since The Cosby Show s inception, Cosby had always intended for Clair to reflect the ways in which women's roles have evolved in both the home and workplace. Clair is depicted as a hardworking career woman with strong feminist principles, most evident in the character's early confrontations with chauvinistic son-in-law Elvin. One particularly memorable interaction, dubbed Clair's \"feminist rant\" by the media, has become so popular that the scene continues to be heavily circulated on the Internet and social media, 30 years after its initial appearance. Both Clair's role and Rashad's performance have garnered significant acclaim; Clair was the series' only main character who avoided criticisms that regularly plagued other aspects of The Cosby Show. Rashad was nominated for two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Despite the actress' continued success, Clair remains the role for which Rashad is best known, credited with establishing her as a television icon. Clair is revered as one of television's most beloved mothers; as one of television's first working mothers, the character's profound influence on African-American women and female lawyers in television has been dubbed the \"Clair Huxtable effect\". ==Development== , Cosby's real-life wife, who convinced Cosby to change Clair's profession from a plumber to a lawyer.|alt=Television producer Camille Cosby, comedian Bill Cosby's wife, upon whom Clair Huxtable is loosely based. Clair was created for The Cosby Show by comedian Bill Cosby, one of the show's creators. Cosby had pitched a television series about a detective who solves crime using wit and humor; Clair's earliest incarnation resembled his character's girlfriend, who is depicted as \"a strong woman with her own career\". Networks were not interested in developing the program, prompting Cosby to pursue a more autobiographical idea. Cosby eventually based The Cosby Show on his stand-up comedy film Bill Cosby: Himself (1983), which heavily features jokes about his wife and children. Clair is based on Cosby's own wife, Camille. Although the role of the show's parents evolved dramatically from The Cosby Show s inception to production, the concept of a strong career woman was one of the few ideas retained from Cosby's detective series. When Cosby first pitched The Cosby Show to NBC, it revolved around a blue-collar couple; Clair was described as a plumber and the character's husband Cliff, played by Cosby himself, was a limousine driver. Eventually, the idea of Clair working as a plumber was discarded and the character was briefly rewritten into a Dominican housewife. Inspired by Ricky Ricardo from the sitcom I Love Lucy, of which Cosby was a fan, much of the show's humor would have been derived from Clair's tendency to revert to her native language, Spanish, when upset or agitated. Describing the concept as \"the reverse of [I Love] Lucy\", Cosby explained that instead the husband \"would be the person that didn’t understand when she spoke Spanish\" as opposed to the wife. Camille and executive producers Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner eventually convinced Cosby that the series should feature a family that resembled their own more closely, specifically headed by a pair of successful parents with white-collar professions. Thus, Cosby rewrote Clair and Cliff into a lawyer and doctor, respectively. Clair's Dominican heritage was abandoned before the pilot was filmed. However, the character still speaks some Spanish in the first episode and continues to speak the language periodically throughout the series, albeit not as frequently as Cosby had envisioned. Cosby borrowed several names from his real-life family for his fictional one; Clair's maiden name is Hanks, which she shares with Camille. The second season explores each character gaining more responsibility, none more-so than Clair, who is deliberately provided with more storylines and emotions to experience in terms of her relationship with her husband and children. plays Dr. Cliff Huxtable, Clair's husband who is marginally less stern than she is as a parent.|alt=A black and white image of comedian Bill Cosby, who portrays Clair's husband Cliff. New Jersey 101.5 believes \"Strong, loving and warm\" to be \"three of the best ways to describe Clair\". MeTV described Clair's parenting style as \"firm, yet loving.\" Writing for NPR, Eric Deggans observed that Clair uses a \"loving-yet-sardonic\" approach to parenting, demonstrated by her line \"I was a beautiful woman once, before the children came\". Considered to be the stricter of the two parents, Clair is humorous and sarcastic about the frustrations and challenges of parenting, often joking about killing or abandoning her children but at the same time making sure they do not take her exaggerated threats too seriously by demonstrating \"obvious loving indulgences\". She prefers to use \"a no-nonsense ... approach to maintaining\" her family, except for rare situations in which nonsense is required. In the pilot, Clair responds to Theo's last minute breakfast request for scrambled eggs after she had already prepared sunny side up eggs for him by using her spatula to \"scramble\" them. According to The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women author Susan Douglas, Clair sometimes makes the mistake of alternating between stern and overindulgent too abruptly. Equally successful in their respective professions, Clair's relationship with Cliff deliberately mirrors the real-life relationship of Cosby and his wife Camille. Clair occasionally raises her voice but seldom yells or loses her temper, demonstrating calmness and a sense of humor as a \"remedy for the trials and tribulations of motherhood.\" In comparison to Cliff, Clair is usually the tougher and more sensible parent, offering her children legitimate advice that they can actually apply to their everyday lives; it remains clear to audiences that Clair runs the household. AskMen's Geoffrey Lansdell agreed that the character \"rel[ies] on a sly maternal quality that fed off of Bill Cosby’s silly paternal playfulness\". However, there are occasionally times when Clair resorts to the \"wait till your father gets home\" method of disciplining her children. Clair generally accepts her children's decisions and ever-changing ambitions, specifically in regards to schooling, marriage and careers. Both Clair and Cliff value the importance of proper education in their children's lives, appearing proudest when they do well in school, but delivering the most serious punishments when they underperform academically. On one occasion, Theo rebels against his parents' high expectations of him, arguing, \"Because of what you two have achieved, the whole world expects a lot more from us than other kids. Let’s face it, there’s nowhere else left for us to go but down,\" a statement Clair immediately reprimands him for making. When it comes to parenting, Clair usually maintains \"an allure of cool, calm confidence ... exhibit[ing] a strong but gentle parenting stance, one that wasn’t seen on television by a woman of color\" at the time, according to Global Grind's Desire Thompson. Clair practices disciplining her children without ever punishing them physically, often delivering punishments \"with a calm charm\", and raises her four daughters to love and respect themselves. However, she is also known for ranting at her children when she loses her temper, one of her most recognizable of which is the one she gives Vanessa when she attends a concert in Baltimore against her parents' wishes. In the Season 3 episode \"The Shower\", Denise hosts a wedding shower for a close friend who gets pregnant on purpose to blackmail her parents into letting her marry her fiancé as soon as possible. When Denise broaches the subject of how she would handle a similar situation, Clair sternly – but rather comically – insists that she will never find herself in a similar situation. Despite her seriousness and disciplinarian status, Clair seldom shies away from laughing and participating in fun activities alongside her family as opposed to simply observing them from the sidelines. The character is also fond of relaxing and taking time to herself away from her children whenever necessary. ==References==",
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