Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who has died aged 54, having drowned while swimming off the coast of Costa Rica, gained fame worldwide as the cool, charming, occasionally mischievous son of Bill Cosby in one of American television’s most popular sitcoms. The Cosby Show, which ran between 1985 and 1992, was groundbreaking in featuring an affluent African American family in Brooklyn, New York: Cosby starred as Cliff Huxtable, an obstetrician, and Phylicia Rashad as his wife, Clair, a lawyer, with Warner as their middle child, Theo, and Sabrina Le Beauf, Lisa Bonet, Tempestt Bledsoe and Keishia Knight Pulliam as their daughters.
Cliff and Clair were portrayed as loving and nurturing, but strict, parents. When auditioning for the role of Theo during the final round of a nationwide search, Warner was far from what Cosby – who co-created the sitcom – wanted. “They were looking for a 6ft 2in 15-year-old,” he recalled, “and I was 5ft 5in and 13. I played those scenes like you see kids on television, kind of smart-alecky, and when Cliff said something, I got my hand on my hips and [was] rolling my eyes.” Cosby was unimpressed. “Would you really talk to your father like that?” he asked. “No,” said Warner. “Well, I don’t want to see that on this show,” said the star.
Warner was given a second chance, and over the sitcom’s eight-year run – during which it won six Emmy awards and a nomination for Warner’s performance – he became a role model for teenagers, sharing his tips on coping with adolescence in a book, Theo and Me: Growing Up Okay (1988). The Cosby Show’s final episode finished with Theo’s graduation from New York University, and Warner left with a sense of pride in the legacy left by the programme for its depiction of both race and class.
He later lamented that this was tainted by allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment made against Cosby. “That’s the thing that saddens me the most,” Warner said in 2015, “because in a few generations the Huxtables will have been just a fairy tale. The legacy can’t help but be tarnished.”
The son of Pamela (nee McGee) and Robert Warner, who worked in drug intervention programmes, he was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and named after the civil rights activist Malcolm X and the jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal. He and his mother moved to Los Angeles following his parents’ divorce.
His first television appearances were in episodes of the private investigator drama Matt Houston (in 1982) and in the performing arts school series Fame (in 1983), before he landed the part of Theo in The Cosby Show. While the series was running, he attended the Professional Children’s school in New York. He also reprised his role as Theo in the spin-off A Different World (in 1988 and 1989) and guest-starred in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (in 1990 and 1991), playing the boyfriend of a cousin of Will Smith’s streetwise teenager.
Warner remained busy on television, popping up in guest roles in many series, but also starring in two sitcoms: with Eddie Griffin as chalk-and-cheese flat-sharers and business partners in Malcolm & Eddie (1996-2000) and as Dr Alex Reed, a professor married to a psychologist in a blended family, in Reed Between the Lines (2011-15).
He also played the cynical but compassionate Kurdy Malloy, assisting Luke Perry’s title character, in the post-apocalyptic action series Jeremiah (2002-04); Lieutenant Chuck Cooper in the police procedural Major Crimes (from 2013 to 2016); Julius Rowe, a prison psychologist, in Suits (from 2016 to 2017); and AJ Austin, a gifted but volatile surgeon, in the hospital drama The Resident (2018-23). In films, he appeared as a thug in Fool’s Gold (2008), alongside Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson.
As a director, he went behind the camera for The Resident and other programmes, as well as music videos for New Edition and Five Star.
With the band Miles Long, Warner played the bass guitar and recited poetry over the music for several EP and album releases. He shared a 2013 Grammy with the Robert Glasper Experiment and Lalah Hathaway for his spoken-word contribution to a cover of the Stevie Wonder song Jesus Children of America, recorded as a memorial to the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut.
Warner was married and had a daughter. They survive him.
• Malcolm-Jamal Warner, actor and musician, born 18 August 1970; died 20 July 2025
