Malcolm-Jamal Warner was known for his role as Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show.Paras Griffin/Getty Images
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 there said.
Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department said Monday that 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 Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable about money and an ear piercing he tries to hide 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 the most popular in America for much of its run from 1984 to 1992.
He played the role for eight seasons in all 197 episodes, winning 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 Cosby’s Instagram shows a toddler sporting one.
Like the rest of the show’s 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 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.
His film roles include 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 was married with a daughter, but chose to not publicly disclose their names. Warner’s representatives declined immediate comment.
