Actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 'Cosby Show' star, has died at 54

Actor and Grammy Award winner Malcolm-Jamal Warner, best known for his role as the sweet teenager Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, has died at 54.

Per the Associated Press, Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Department confirmed that Warner died Sunday in a drowning accident while on vacation with his family at a beach along the country's Caribbean coast. He was pulled into a current. Fellow beachgoers tried to rescue him, but first responders from Costa Rica's Red Cross were unable to revive him.

TV audiences initially came to know Warner as the only son of Heathcliff and Clair Huxtable, a role he played on the smash hit comedy The Cosby Show between 1984 and 1992 and for which he earned an Emmy Award nomination. Later, he appeared on the sitcoms Malcolm & Eddie and Reed Between the Lines. More recently, he appeared on the Fox medical drama The Resident.

Off-Broadway, he appeared in such plays as Three Ways Home and Cryin' Shame, for which he received an NAACP Theater Award. 

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His interests were not limited to acting: "Jesus Children," a song by the Robert Glasper Experiment featuring vocalist Lalah Hathaway, which also features a spoken-word contribution from Warner memorializing the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, won a Grammy for best traditional R&B performance in 2015. He was also nominated for a second Grammy, for best spoken word poetry album, in 2023 for his project Hiding in Plain View.

In 2023, he spoke to All Things Considered about that project and about writing poetry during the COVID pandemic.

"Vulnerability can be a scary thing," he said, "even when we're on the mend. Black boys boast bravado not to seem broken. And often, so do Black men. I see you looking for clues, searching for cues, longing to know what I'm not telling you, as if I'm hiding in plain view."

He also played bass guitar and told NPR that he found avenues of creative expression through music and poetry that he couldn't access through acting. In 2024, he launched a podcast, "Not All Hood"; the most recent episode, with co-host Candace Kelley and poet and activist Tamika "Georgia Me" Harper, was published last week.

Warner was an executive producer for the beloved PBS children's show The Magic School Bus, for which he also served as the voice of The Producer. He directed episodes of many television series, including The Cosby Show, The Resident, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Copyright 2025 NPR