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 define the 1980s, died at 54 in an accidental drowning in Costa Rica, authorities there said Monday.
Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department said Warner drowned 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.
“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 Cosby about grades and careers, and another episode where Theo tries in vain to hide his ear piercing from his dad.
Theo was the only son among four daughters in the household of Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable and Phylicia Rashad’s Clair Huxtable on the NBC sitcom, and he would be one of the prime representations of American teenage life and Black boyhood on a show that was the most popular in America for much of its run from 1984 to 1992.
Warner worked for more than 40 years as an actor and director, also starring in the sitcoms “Malcolm & Eddie” and “Read Between the Lines,” and in the medical drama “The Resident.”
His final credits came in TV guest roles, including a dramatic four-episode arc last year on the network procedural “9-1-1,” where he played a nurse who was a long-term survivor of a terrible fire.
“I grew up with a maniacal obsession with not wanting to be one of those ‘where are they now kids,’” Warner told The Associated Press 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.’”
He played Theo Huxtable for eight seasons, appearing in each of the 197 episodes of “The Cosby Show” and earning an Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy in 1986.
Actor Viola Davis was among those giving tribute Monday.
“Theo was OUR son, OUR brother, OUR friend. He was absolutely so familiar, and we rejoiced at how TV got it right!!”, The Oscar winner said on Instagram. “But Malcolm got it right … we reveled in your life and are gutted by this loss.”
The Cosby legacy
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 color 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.
Life after Theo
Warner’s first major post-“Cosby” role came on the sitcom “Malcolm & Eddie,” co-starring with comedian Eddie Griffin in the popular series on the defunct UPN network from 1996 to 2000.
“My heart is heavy right now,” Griffin said on Instagram Monday. “Rest easy my brother for you have Won in life and now you have won forever eternal bliss..”
In the 2010s, he starred opposite Tracee Ellis Ross as a family-blending couple for two seasons on the BET sitcom “Read 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.”
Warner’s 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 also worked as a director, helming episodes of “Malcolm & Eddie,” “Read Between the Lines,” “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 City, New Jersey. His mother, Pamela Warner, served as his manager when he began pursuing acting at age 9.
In the early 1980s, he made guest appearances on the TV shows “Matt Houston” — his first credit — and “Fame.”
Warner was 13 when he landed the role of Theo in an audition after a broad search for the right child actor.
Cosby was a major star at the time, and the show was certain to be widely seen, but few could’ve predicted the huge phenomenon it would become.
For many the lasting image of Theo, 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.
Warner would develop a love-hate relationship with the character.
“Theo was very good to me. And I think that show and that role is timeless. And I’m very proud of that role,” Warner said in a recent podcast interview, while noting that he’d tried to separate himself from the role and for years would recoil when fans addressed him as Theo.
“Part of the distancing for me is not wanting to see how much of Malcolm is in Theo. I remember doing the show and I always thought that Theo is corny. I want Theo to be cooler,” he told Melyssa Ford on her “Hot & Bothered” podcast. “Somebody called me America’s favorite white Black boy. And I was 15. … It hurt me. … That’s cultural trauma.”
Warner was married with a young daughter, but chose to not publicly disclose their names. His representatives declined immediate comment on his death.
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AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton reported from Los Angeles. AP National Writer Jocelyn Noveck contributed reporting from New York.
