Los Angeles: US comedy icon Bill Cosby has been ordered to testify under oath in response to accusations from a woman who said he drugged and sexually abused her when she was a minor.

A Los Angeles Supreme Court judge on Wednesday ordered the 78-year-old actor to submit to questioning from the lawyer of Judy Huth on 9 October. Huth will have to answer questions from Cosby’s lawyers six days later.

Huth has accused the fallen star of forcing her to drink alcohol before taking her to the Playboy Mansion, where she says he sexually assaulted her. The alleged incident happened in 1974, when she was 15.

In her complaint, filed in December 2014, Huth says Cosby forced her to perform sex acts, leading to psychological damages.

Cosby — a pioneering African-American comedian who played a beloved family doctor on the hit 1980s sitcom ‘The Cosby Show’ — has been swept up in a flood of accusations of sexual abuse spanning four decades from dozens of women.

New York Magazine pictured 35 of his accusers on its cover last week, all of whom say the comedian drugged and violated them.

Forty-six women have accused Cosby so far, and the magazine left an empty chair on its cover to represent those who have not talked publicly about their accusations.