Some of the greatest lessons about growing up and what it means to be an adult I learned from—or, rather, through—Theo Huxtable.
The middle-child sibling on The Cosby Show, Theo was a conduit for the modern teenager in the ’80s and ’90s: a sense of entitlement and arrogance permeating the usual haplessness that accompany coming of age. That it rang so true—hilarious, endearing, and often profound—is because of the performance of Malcolm-Jamal Warner.
Warner died at age 54, it was announced Monday. He was in Costa Rica vacationing with his family, and drowned while swimming.
The death of a beloved actor who is sewn so directly into our memories and nostalgia is always a tragic shock. One rare nice thing about social media these days is its role as a gathering space for sharing grief, tributes, and favorite moments from the person’s career, which has been happening in droves following the news of Warner’s death.
The fan-favorite moment from his run on The Cosby Show seems to overwhelmingly be from the Season 1 episode where Theo spirals after he’s saddled with one of the ugliest, most ill-fitting shirts he’s ever seen—let alone worn—right before his first date with a girl he’s desperate to impress.
In the episode, Cliff (Bill Cosby) and Clair (Phylicia Rashad) are stunned when Theo returns from the mall with a $90 shirt he purchased for his date. After they force him to return it, Denise (Lisa Bonet) tells him she can recreate the shirt for just $30. She quickly realizes she’s in over her head, and the butchered result causes Theo to blow a gasket.
It’s a classic Cosby Show episode: Theo’s meltdown is hysterical, but it’s packed with teaching moments about self-confidence, not caring what others think, daring to stand out, and doing things because you love your family—not to mention financial responsibility. (A $90 shirt for a teenager’s date!?)
Movingly, the series’ iconic “Night and Day” sequence is all over my timeline. For their grandparents’ anniversary, the Huxtables, including Clair, do a lipsynched song and dance routine to Ray Charles’ “Night Time Is the Right Time.” One of the undeniable highlights is when Theo enters at the top of the stars wearing a fedora and starts performing the Ray Charles lines.
The scene has always been special as a testament to a Black family’s love for each other on this historic sitcom, but it’s especially moving to watch—with that context—following the news of Warner’s death.
Yet the most memorable Theo scene, and one of Warner’s best performances, may be one of the very first ones.
Theo and Cliff’s playful, brutal (and uproarious) real-talk about the realities of money in adulthood in the series’ 1984 pilot may be the scene that cemented the show’s eventual journey to become the era’s definitive family sitcom.
Theo shrugs off getting bad grades because he doesn’t plan to go to college and instead live an easy life working a “regular” job. This bemuses Cliff, who rifles through Theo’s messy room and finds an open Monopoly game. Using Monopoly money, he attempts to give Theo a wake-up call about how even “regular” people are burdened by the stress of taxes, bills, and the crushing cost of living.
Mischievously, Theo tries to negotiate with Cliff, claiming that he won’t fall prey to all those capitalist woes: He’ll live in New Jersey instead of Manhattan! Get a motorbike instead of a car! Eat bologna sandwiches and cereal! But Cliff has the Trump card. Does Theo expect to have a girlfriend? He sure does. Cliff snatches the rest of the Monopoly money out of his hands.
The tone of the scene encapsulates everything that made The Cosby Show a hit, from Cliff’s giddiness in sarcastically schooling his son to the sweetness of Theo’s deluded confidence: It was all so recognizable. To create a performance that bright and yet so lived-in at such a young age is a testament to Warner’s remarkable talent; he was just 14 when he cast on The Cosby Show.
Celebrating The Cosby Show is awkward, to be generous, and often very dark, to be blunt. After over 50 women came forward with allegations against him, Cosby was convicted of sexual assault in 2018; it was overturned in 2021, only for even more accusers to come forward.
I interviewed Warner about this in 2016, when he was kicking off a major career resurgence and transition into the kind of prestige projects that indicated he had shed the wholesome image of Theo Huxtable. He was starring in Ryan Murphy’s The People vs. O.J. Simpson: An American Crime Story, playing Al “A.C.” Cowlings, Simpson’s childhood friend and the person who was driving the white Bronco during the infamous 1994 car chase.
Excited to have a part in such a major project—it won just about every television award there is—Warner was grappling with how complicated the major career and life stepping stone that he got him there now was.
“It’s been frustrating,” he said, referring to the countless times one throwaway quote about Cosby at the end of an unrelated interview ends up used as a traffic-baiting headline of the piece. “But I have accepted that even when Mr. Cosby is long gone I will still get asked about him.”
“I’ve talked before about—and Phylicia Rashad has talked about it, too—the dismantling of this man’s legacy,” he continued. “But today it really hit me in a different way because through the years, through my whole career, there’s so much that I have been able to attribute to the experience of being on the show. So much of who I am and how I carry myself in this business has been influenced by him. A lot of things that he has taught me just by example, I carry so much of that with me. There’s a sense of integrity. There’s a sense of dignity that I’ve been able to attribute largely to him. I still attribute a lot of that to him.”
Most recently, Warner told People, “Regardless of how some people may feel about the show now, I’m still proud of the legacy and having been a part of such an iconic show that had such a profound impact on—first and foremost, Black culture—but also American culture."
And as the clips of his on the show that have been shared on Monday prove, Warner’s work—on its own—has had that profound impact too.
