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Malcolm-Jamal Warner Dies: ‘Cosby Show’s Theo Huxtable Star Was 54

Originally posted on TV Insider | Last updated Jul 21, 2025 4:06 PM ET

Actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner has died. The actor known for playing Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show was 54 years old.

Warner’s cause of death was confirmed to People by a source who shared he died by accidental drowning while swimming on a family vacation in Costa Rica.

Along with The Cosby Show, Warner has remained a TV favorite, appearing in other popular programs including The Resident, 9-1-1, American Horror Story, and Community, to name a few.

Born August 18, 1970, Warner was named after Malcolm X and jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal. At the age of nine, he’d expressed an interest in performance and was enrolled in entertainment schools. Getting his start young, Warner made a name for himself as a child star.

As mentioned above, Warner played Theo Huxtable in NBC‘s The Cosby Show for its run between 1984 and 1992 and appeared in installments of the network’s other hit series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He also guest-starred as Theo on The Cosby Show‘s spinoff, A Different World. Warner earned an Emmy nod for his role on The Cosby Show in 1986.

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Warner even got behind the camera on a few episodes of The Cosby Show as a director after first trying out the format on a New Edition music video. In the years following The Cosby Show, Warner appeared in shows like Here and Now, The Magic School Bus as the voice of The Producer, Malcolm and Eddie, and Touched by an Angel.

Following his run on those shows, he appeared in the feature Drop Zone and made-for-TV movies Tuskegee Airmen and Tyson. Most recently, Warner had a leading role in Fox’s since-canceled medical drama The Resident, in which he played Dr. AJ Austin. Despite the show’s cancellation, co-creator Amy Holden Jones and executive producer Andrew Chapman told TV Insider that Warner “would be great” as the lead of a spinoff. “Having him being the lead doctor and then you’d have a whole other cast around him and you’d have a whole other different set of problems that he would have,” said Jones.

He also played a nurse with a connection to Bobby’s (Peter Krause) past on the first responder hit, 9-1-1. (It also reunited him with Angela Bassett, with whom he worked a few times.) Additionally, Warner appeared as Shirley’s (Yvette Nicole Brown) ex-husband on Community and guest-starred on Alert: Missing Persons Unit. Other recent TV roles include parts on The Irrational and Accused.

Warner is survived by his wife and young daughter.

This article first appeared on TV Insider and was syndicated with permission.

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