Malcolm-Jamal Warner was Gen X’s big brother

Malcolm-Jamal Warner will forever be associated with two fictional characters: Theo Huxtable and Gordon Gartrell. The first made Warner familiar to us. The second only exists by reputation.

In the brand-conscious ‘80s, the right item of designer clothing could make or break a kid’s popularity, meriting a Gartrell name drop in “A Shirt Story,” a Hall of Fame-level episode of “The Cosby Show.”

Theo, the only son among Clair and Cliff Huxtable’s five children, scores a date with a girl he has a crush on and promises her he’d wear a Gartrell shirt. But when Cliff balks at its $95 price tag (the equivalent of more than $280 when adjusted for inflation), big sister Denise (played by Lisa Bonet) offers to make a copy for a third of the price. It doesn’t occur to either of them that her lack of sewing experience might be a problem.

Denise’s black and goldenrod atrocity isn’t just an ill-proportioned mishmash. It’s a one-in-a-million sight gag. The studio audience’s laughter at the first sight of it is priceless, but it’s Warner’s high-pitched screeching starting with “Deniiiiise!” that extends the gag. “Look at these sleeves! My arms are the same length. Why aren’t my sleeves?” he croaks. When she weakly advises him to tuck in the shirt a little more, he snarls through a clenched jaw, “It’s tucked into my socks!”

If you haven’t thought about Warner or Theo Huxtable in a while, “the shirt” is probably the first image that comes to mind. However, if you were part of a family like the Huxtables, that scene could have come from real life. Denise legitimately tries to help Theo. He may not appreciate her botched effort at first, but it worked out in the end: His date thinks the preposterous shirt is fly. Unsaid but implied is that Theo somehow makes it cool.

My family bore some resemblance to the Huxtables, in that my dad was a physician and I am the youngest of five kids. That made me The Rudy of the bunch, I guess, although I was closer to Vanessa’s age when “The Cosby Show” premiered in 1984. In any case, I would have loved to have a brother like Theo, the middle child and sole boy in the Huxtable household. As both an older brother and a younger one, Theo was generally a good sibling. Sometimes he tortured Rudy and Vanessa, but he stuck by them more often than not. My brothers did not do the same for me.

Point being, within the pride many Black Americans took in watching the Huxtables was the validation their kids lent to peers in the audience: They were a lot like us. Rudy may have been the scene-stealer in the earliest seasons of the show, but Theo had the most heart, striving to live up to his parents’ high expectations while behaviorally overcompensating for his low grades.

Although Warner was a teenager, he treated his portrayal seriously. Theo evolved over the years, growing from a funny, brash kid into a more sensitive and determined student once a dyslexia diagnosis explained his poor academic performance. Eventually, he’d counsel other kids with learning disabilities at a local youth center.

Cosby may have written Theo’s relatability into the character, since he’s based on his son Ennis, but it’s Warner’s genial presence that won us over. He could still be defiant, but he always remained real. Hence, his performance earned him his earliest major industry notice in 1986, when he snagged a best supporting comedy actor Emmy nomination.

That these memories remain unblemished even now speaks to the esteem people hold for Warner, who carried that grounded sensibility throughout his career. Hence, we can consider what Warner gave to the world separately from the legacy of “The Cosby Show,” a source of conflicted feelings for those of us who grew up with it.

Warner was found dead on Sunday after an accidental drowning during a vacation in Costa Rica. He was 54 years old. In that too-short timespan, he built a multifaceted career as a poet, musician, actor and director. But if you came of age in the 1980s, Warner was the son, brother and friend we welcomed into our homes while “The Cosby Show” was in production and long after it ended.

Family sitcoms dominated the ’80s, but only a few of the child stars who carried them went on to have successful careers. Warner was one of them. His skill and charisma in playing Theo led to constant work after “The Cosby Show” went off the air in 1992. Cosby executive-produced a vehicle for Warner called “Here and Now,” which attempted to tap into the audience’s affection for his TV son with a too-similar character. While that was quickly cancelled, Warner came to be associated with stable, good-hearted guys whose lives are more together than those of their friends.

(FOX Image Collection via Getty Images) Malcolm-Jamal Warner in “The Resident”

On UPN’s “Malcolm & Eddie,” which premiered in 1996, he’s the straight man to Eddie Griffin’s frenetic doofus. Later, the BET sitcom “Reed Between the Lines” made him husband material to Tracee Ellis Ross’ psychologist. He was also adept at drama, proven in the years he spent as a hard-nosed surgeon in the Fox medical drama “The Resident.” But Warner’s guest roles were special treats, too. (Two that immediately come to mind are “Community,” which cast him as Andre, the estranged husband and emotional kryptonite to Yvette Nicole Brown‘s lovable Shirley; and, owing to a recent rewatch, Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson‘s  “Detroiters,” where he played a local businessman with a yen for sand surfing in Dubai.)

Television history would point back to the Huxtable household’s role in normalizing Black prosperity on TV. Although “The Cosby Show” came after “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons,” the Huxtables were the first Black upper-middle-class TV family that many Americans connected with.

“Though the Huxtables were clearly Black — reflected quite obviously by their dress, the Black art on the walls, the music — the family issues all were universal,” Warner told People in 2023. “And though Cliff was a doctor and Clair was an attorney, the family dynamic was one that practically every family — no matter the ethnicity, socio-economic status or even family makeup — could find something to relate to.”

For many, Theo was that common point of relatability. Early in the show’s run, Todd Bridges’ Willis on “Diff’rent Strokes” defined the big brother, a partner in crime you could get in trouble with but would also stick up for you. A year after “Cosby” became a runaway success, ABC responded with “Growing Pains,” which cast Kirk Cameron as the zany jokester enlivening that show’s Seaver household.

If Warner’s Theo occupies a space in our affections beside Michael J. Fox’s Alex Keaton on “Family Ties” (“The Cosby Show”‘s timeslot partner for its first three seasons), credit their normalcy onscreen and in life. Today, Fox is an American treasure largely because of the care he took with his TV persona. Alex could be smug, but his soft side was heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, Warner imbued Theo with a swagger anchored in a true decency that the people who knew him best say defined him. His post- “Cosby” choices indicate a desire to mature along with his audience while retaining his signature wholesomeness. Once “The Cosby Show” ended, Warner briefly hosted the revival of “CBS Storybreak,” a Saturday morning show previously hosted by Bob Keeshan, better known to Gen Xers as the star of “Captain Kangaroo.” From there, he played a recurring role in “The Magic School Bus” in addition to multiple guest appearances. He also ventured into directing, helming episodes of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and Nickelodeon’s “All That” and “Kenan & Kel.”

A lifelong poet, Warner shared the 2015 Grammy for best traditional R&B performance with Lalah Hathaway and the Robert Glasper Experiment for his spoken word contribution to “Jesus Children,” their reinterpretation of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 classic.

His 2022 album “Hiding in Plain View” netted Warner another Grammy Award nomination in 2023 for best spoken word poetry album.

In 2024, Warner found another conversation-starter via “Not All Hood,” a podcast he cohosted with Candace Kelley and Weusi Baraka dedicated to exploring Black Americans’ myriad identities and experiences.

On one of his final episodes featuring close friend and “Cosby Show” kid sister Keshia Knight Pulliam  — the real Rudy — Warner credited the production’s New York location for keeping them grounded. “There weren’t other shows shooting in New York, so our friends were regular people,” he explained. They weren’t in the business. They weren’t even trying to get into the business.”

Warner added, “Growing up in New York on television is very different from growing up in LA on television, in that in New York they don’t care.”

The production’s locale also made it easier for Warner and Theo to participate in hip-hop’s early mainstreaming. You can see him in New Edition’s “N.E. Heart Break” video in 1989 or dancing in the Special Ed video for the rapper’s single “I’m the Magnificent,” which Warner also directed.

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On a related note, The Roots’ Questlove also maintains that “The Cosby Show” features “one of the most influential moments in the history of hip-hop,” pointing to a second-season episode in which Stevie Wonder showcased how sampling works by grabbing snippets of the kids’ voices during a studio visit, including Theo saying, “jammin’ on the one.”

Warner may have initially captured our fondness via his most famous character, but he securely established his individuality over the years to a degree that his mentor’s allegations didn’t adversely affect his career.

Beginning in 2014, Cosby was accused by more than 60 women of drugging and sexually assaulting them. In 2018, he was convicted of sexually assaulting Temple University employee Andrea Constand, serving three years before the conviction was overturned in 2021 based on a procedural error. After that, more accusers came forward.

In the later part of his career, Warner recognized that he would be always asked about the man who gave him his start in TV:  “It’s just a bad situation all around — for him, for his family, the women, their families, the legacy of the show,” he said in 2015, shortly after the accusations came to light.

Years after these allegations surfaced, “The Cosby Show” has largely vanished from major platforms. You can still find reruns in cable’s hinterlands or purchase the series, but the public seems resolved to acknowledge its impact without revisiting episodes in full. There are good reasons for that, thanks to the many hindsight analyses of ways Cosby may have winked at his alleged crimes through situations written in the show.

But the upside of Warner’s prolific career and connection to his fans is that he made the line between the person he is and the show that introduced him extremely clear. His life’s example ensured that the sins of America’s dad would never land at the feet of the son.