By Javier Cordoba and Andrew Dalton
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the actor who played teenage son Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, has died at age 54 in an accidental drowning in Costa Rica, authorities said on Monday.
Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department said Warner drowned on Sunday afternoon on a beach on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. He was swimming at Playa Cocles in Limon province when a current pulled him deeper into the ocean.
Actor and musician Malcolm-Jamal Warner has died aged 54.Credit: Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP
“He was rescued by people on the beach,” the department’s initial report said, but first responders from Costa Rica’s Red Cross found him without vital signs and he was taken to the morgue.
Warner created many TV moments etched in the memories of Generation X children and their parents, including a pilot-episode argument with Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable about money, and another episode where Theo tries to hide his ear piercing from his dad. His Theo was the only son among four daughters in the household of Cliff Huxtable and Phylicia Rashad’s Clair Huxtable on the NBC sitcom, and he would be one of the prime representations of American teenage boyhood on a show that was one of the most popular in America for much of its run from 1984 to 1992.
He played the role for eight seasons, appearing in each of the show’s 197 episodes and earning an Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy in 1986. For many, the lasting image of the character, and of Warner, is of him wearing a badly botched mock designer shirt sewed by his sister Denise, played by Lisa Bonet. The “Gordon Gartrell” shirt later became a memeable image: Anthony Mackie wore one on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and the profile picture on Warner’s Instagram shows a toddler sporting one.
NBA hall-of-famer Magic Johnson was among those paying tribute on Monday. Johnson said on X that he and his wife were sad to hear of the death of their friend.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner found fame in the ’80s playing Theodore Huxtable in The Cosby Show.
“We were both super fans of the hit Cosby Show and continued to follow his career on shows like Malcolm and Eddie and The Resident,” Johnson said. “Every time I ran into Malcolm, we would have deep and fun conversations about basketball, life and business. He will truly be missed.”
Like the rest of The Cosby Show cast, Warner had to contend with the sexual assault allegations against its titular star, whose conviction in a Pennsylvania court was later overturned.
Warner told the Associated Press in 2015 that the show’s legacy was “tarnished”.
“My biggest concern is when it comes to images of people of colour on television and film,” Warner said. “We’ve always had The Cosby Show to hold up against that. And the fact that we no longer have that, that’s the thing that saddens me the most because in a few generations the Huxtables will have been just a fairy tale.”
Representatives for Cosby declined immediate comment.
Warner later appeared on the sitcom Malcolm & Eddie, co-starring with comedian Eddie Griffin in the series on the defunct UPN network from 1996 to 2000. And in the 2010s, he starred opposite Tracee Ellis Ross as a family-blending couple for two seasons on the BET sitcom Reed Between the Lines. He also had a role as O.J. Simpson’s friend Al Cowlings on American Crime Story and was a series regular on Fox’s The Resident.
“First I met you as Theo with the rest of the world, then you were my first TV husband,” Ross said on Instagram. “My heart is so, so sad. What an actor and friend you were: warm, gentle, present, kind, thoughtful, deep, funny, elegant.”
The cast of The Cosby Show.Credit: NBCUniversal via Getty Images
His film roles included the 2008 rom-com Fool’s Gold with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson. A poet and a musician, Warner was a Grammy winner for best traditional R&B performance, and was nominated for best spoken word poetry album for Hiding in Plain View.
Warner had been married for about 10 years with a daughter about five years old, but chose not to make their names public. Warner’s representatives declined immediate comment on his death.
“I grew up with a maniacal obsession with not wanting to be one of those ‘where are they now kids?’” Warner told the AP in 2015. “I feel very blessed to be able to have all of these avenues of expression ... to be where I am now and finally at a place where I can let go of that worry about having a life after Cosby.”
AP