Celebrities
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, ‘Cosby Present’ actor, dies at 54
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who as teenage son Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” was central to a cultural phenomenon that helped outline the Eighties, died at 54 in an unintentional drowning in Costa Rica, authorities there mentioned Monday.
Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Division mentioned Warner drowned Sunday afternoon on a seaside on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. He was swimming at Playa Cocles in Limon province when a present pulled him deeper into the ocean.
“He was rescued by individuals on the seaside,” the division’s preliminary report mentioned, however first responders from Costa Rica’s Purple Cross discovered him with out very important indicators and he was taken to the morgue.
Warner created many TV moments etched in the memories of Generation X children and their mother and father, together with a pilot-episode argument with Cosby about grades and careers, and one other episode the place Theo tries in useless to cover his ear piercing from his dad.
Theo was the one son amongst 4 daughters within the family of Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable and Phylicia Rashad’s Clair Huxtable on the NBC sitcom, and he could be one of many prime representations of American teenage life and Black boyhood on a present that was the most well-liked in America for a lot of its run from 1984 to 1992.
Warner labored for greater than 40 years as an actor and director, additionally starring within the sitcoms “Malcolm & Eddie” and “Learn Between the Strains,” and within the medical drama “The Resident.”
His last credit got here in TV visitor roles, together with a dramatic four-episode arc final 12 months on the community procedural “9-1-1,” the place he performed a nurse who was a long-term survivor of a horrible fireplace.
“I grew up with a maniacal obsession with not eager to be a kind of ‘the place are they now children,’” Warner advised The Related Press in 2015. “I really feel very blessed to have the ability to have all of those avenues of expression … to be the place I’m now and eventually at a spot the place I can let go of that fear about having a life after ‘Cosby.’”
He performed Theo Huxtable for eight seasons, showing in every of the 197 episodes of “The Cosby Present” and incomes an Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy in 1986.
Actor Viola Davis was among those giving tribute Monday.
AP AUDIO: Malcolm-Jamal Warner, ‘Cosby Present’ actor, dies at 54 in Costa Rica drowning
AP correspondent Ed Donahue reviews on the demise of a “Cosby Present” actor.
“Theo was OUR son, OUR brother, OUR pal. He was completely so acquainted, and we rejoiced at how TV obtained it proper!!”, The Oscar winner mentioned on Instagram. “However Malcolm obtained it proper … we reveled in your life and are gutted by this loss.”
The Cosby legacy
Like the remainder of the “Cosby Present” forged, Warner needed to cope with the sexual assault allegations in opposition to its titular star, whose conviction in a Pennsylvania courtroom was later overturned.
Warner advised the Related Press in 2015 that the present’s legacy was “tarnished.”
“My largest concern is in relation to photographs of individuals of shade on tv and movie,” Warner mentioned. “We’ve all the time had ‘The Cosby Present’ to carry up in opposition to that. And the truth that we now not have that, that’s the factor that saddens me probably the most as a result of in a couple of generations the Huxtables can have been only a fairy story.”
Representatives for Cosby declined speedy remark.
Life after Theo
Warner’s first main post-“Cosby” function got here on the sitcom “Malcolm & Eddie,” co-starring with comic Eddie Griffin within the standard sequence on the defunct UPN community from 1996 to 2000.
“My coronary heart is heavy proper now,” Griffin mentioned on Instagram Monday. “Relaxation simple my brother for you will have Gained in life and now you will have received without end everlasting bliss..”
Within the 2010s, he starred reverse Tracee Ellis Ross as a family-blending couple for 2 seasons on the BET sitcom “Learn Between The Strains.” He additionally had a task as O.J. Simpson’s pal Al Cowlings on “American Crime Story” and was a sequence common on Fox’s “The Resident.”
“First I met you as Theo with the remainder of the world you then had been my first TV husband,” Ross mentioned on Instagram. “My coronary heart is so so unhappy. What an actor and pal you had been: heat, mild, current, variety, considerate, deep, humorous, elegant.”
Warner’s movie roles included the 2008 rom-com “Idiot’s Gold” with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson. A poet and a musician, Warner was a Grammy winner, for finest conventional R&B efficiency, and was nominated for finest spoken phrase poetry album for “Hiding in Plain View.”
Warner additionally labored as a director, helming episodes of “Malcolm & Eddie,” “Learn Between the Strains,” “The Resident” and “All That.”
An actor’s childhood
Warner, named after Malcolm X and jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, was born in 1970 in Jersey Metropolis, New Jersey. His mom, Pamela Warner, served as his supervisor when he started pursuing performing at age 9.
Within the early Eighties, he made visitor appearances on the TV exhibits “Matt Houston” — his first credit score — and “Fame.”
Warner was 13 when he landed the function of Theo in an audition after a broad seek for the suitable baby actor.
Cosby was a serious star on the time, and the present was sure to be broadly seen, however few might’ve predicted the massive phenomenon it could turn out to be.
For a lot of the lasting picture of Theo, and of Warner, is of him carrying a badly botched mock designer shirt sewed by his sister Denise, performed by Lisa Bonet. The “Gordon Gartrell” shirt later turned a memeable picture: Anthony Mackie wore one on “The Tonight Present” with Jimmy Fallon and the profile image on Warner’s Instagram exhibits a toddler sporting one.
Warner would develop a love-hate relationship with the character.
“Theo was excellent to me. And I feel that present and that function is timeless. And I’m very happy with that function,” Warner mentioned in a current podcast interview, whereas noting that he’d tried to separate himself from the function and for years would recoil when followers addressed him as Theo.
“A part of the distancing for me will not be eager to see how a lot of Malcolm is in Theo. I bear in mind doing the present and I all the time thought that Theo is corny. I need Theo to be cooler,” he advised Melyssa Ford on her “Sizzling & Bothered” podcast. “Any individual referred to as me America’s favourite white Black boy. And I used to be 15. … It damage me. … That’s cultural trauma.”
Warner was married with a younger daughter, however selected to not publicly disclose their names. His representatives declined speedy touch upon his demise.
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AP Leisure Author Andrew Dalton reported from Los Angeles. AP Nationwide Author Jocelyn Noveck contributed reporting from New York.