Remembering Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Everyone’s Favorite Brother

“I’ve been dreading the thought of having to write these words all week because it makes the unfathomable real.”

My favorite thing to do as a kid was to sit in front of my mom’s box TV and soak up whatever was playing on the screen like a sponge. Most of the time, it was cartoons, music video countdown shows and the occasional reruns of classic shows she grew up watching. One of them was “The Cosby Show.”

Before a slew of allegations against Bill Cosby tarnished the warm memories associated with his groundbreaking sitcom, I got to know the Huxtable family quite well. I would sometimes imagine them as my own, since I wasn’t blessed to have siblings or live in a two-parent household throughout my adolescent life. Sondra, Denise, Vanessa and Rudy were the sisters who reminded me of my cousins, and Theo was the brother I never had.

To me, he was cool, goofy, charming, endearing and, oddly enough, really familiar. Much of that I credit to the natural charisma of Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who portrayed Theo not as a character (who was inspired by Cosby’s only son, the late Ennis Cosby), but as the curious teenager he was, also finding his way in the world. He gave a piece of himself to Theo that has lived in my heart ever since, which is why it felt as if the actor and that character would somehow both live forever. I really wish that were true.

The worst goodbyes are the ones you’re never prepared for.

That’s why I, like many on Monday, struggled to wrap my mind around news that Warner died unexpectedly on Sunday in an accidental drowning on a family vacation in Costa Rica, an official autopsy concluded. He was 54 years old. He leaves behind his wife and an 8-year-old daughter.

I’ve been dreading the thought of having to write these words all week because it makes the unfathomable real. It means that we’ve actually lost one of the best and brightest much too soon, and that the man who always felt like a big brother to me is gone.

Warner’s death feels like a gut punch I still haven’t fully processed. Even after his time on “The Cosby Show,” it felt like he was everywhere and in almost everything I appreciated in entertainment. Just last week, he was back on my TV screen as I revisited one of my favorite slept-on shows, “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce,” where he played Darrell, the tender-hearted contractor and boyfriend to Barbara (Retta). And before that, he was one of many reasons I became mildly obsessed with the Fox medical drama “The Resident,” in which he played the extra-arrogant and equally passionate cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. AJ Austin, aka The Raptor.

There’s no shortage of Warner playing memorable television characters through the years. Fans on social media proved that ten times over this week, as my timeline was flooded with clips and photos of Warner starring in some of their favorite shows, including “Malcolm & Eddie,” “Reed Between the Lines,” “Suits,” “9-1-1” and “Community.” Not to mention, he was also behind the lens on episodes of beloved classics like “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Kenan & Kel” and “All That.”

But all roads always led back to “The Cosby Show.”

It’s where many of us first met Warner as the lovable Theo Huxtable, the optimistic, bright-eyed teenager who was imperfect in all the ways one typically is at that age. But he was real, and a stark contrast to how most media had depicted Black boys in the 20th century. That’s exactly why so many of us connected with him.

“I used to look at ‘The Cosby Show’ when I was young, and I used to see myself in him. You know, and his character, Theo,” Morris Chestnut, who shared the screen with Warner in “The Resident,” told People of the late actor. “Particularly back then, a young progressive, powerful, positive person.”

Theo was everything society tried to tell us Black boys couldn’t be — gentle, well-educated, privileged, determined, innocent and profound. But most of all, he was iconic. If not for rocking that all-too-famous Gordon Gartrell dupe (and giving us a hilarious meltdown over it), then for the countless other moments where his coming-of-age reminded us of our own — even some we could only dream of, like “jammin’ on the one” with the one and only Stevie Wonder.

It’s impossible to forget what Theo or Warner meant to us. Both grew up right before our eyes, and the latter took the world by storm with his charm and talent, permeating spaces as a poet, musician, director and a cultural icon who left this world better than he found it. But that’s an understatement to those who knew him up close and personal.

Raven-Symoné, who starred alongside Warner in “The Cosby Show,” said in an Instagram reel that, “Words cannot describe the pain and sadness and surprise I feel with the recent loss of MJW.”

“He was the big brother. He was a beacon. He was one of the most multifaceted, talented men… so gentle,” she added.

Gary LeRoi Gray, another “Cosby Show” co-star, wrote on X that Warner was “‘one of the good ones’ – as cliché as that has unfortunately become these days.”

“You were mythical,” he continued. “A Black boy didn’t have much to look up to coming up in my era. Even ones we thought were idols have turned out to be coal dressed in chrome. You were the real deal.”

Even if you never crossed paths with Warner, we all felt like we knew him. That’s largely due to the care and thought the acting legend poured into every single one of his roles, Theo or otherwise.

“Theo was OUR son, OUR brother, OUR friend… He was absolutely so familiar, and we rejoiced at how TV got it right!!” Viola Davis wrote in a touching tribute to Warner. “But… Malcolm got it right… and now… we reveled in your life and are gutted by this loss.”

This goodbye hits different because Warner meant so many things to American culture, but particularly Black culture. As part of a cultural touchstone that reshaped the idea of the Black family, he’ll always be woven into the fabric and stitches that helped bring that image to life beyond our imagination.

To audiences everywhere, he was family, not by blood, but by bond — a bond established by a seminal program that transformed an extraordinary upper-middle-class Black family into “America’s family.”

Theo was a brother, but Warner made him so much more.

A testament to the indelible mark he left, Warner never went without getting his flowers, not even in the final months of his life. On the May 21 episode of the “Hot & Bothered” podcast, host Melyssa Ford gave Warner the floor to reflect on what he hoped his legacy would be.

“I remember my mother said to me one time, ‘Mr. Cosby gave you immortality,’” he recalled. “So, I know on one lane there’s legacy there. But also because my life, those former years, were always about life beyond ‘Cosby.’” And what a life it was.