Celebrity deaths start to hit a little harder in and around your 40s.
They start to include more people closer to your age, entertainers who shaped your life from afar. It feels closer to home, and can even feel a little like losing a family member.
For many who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, The Cosby Show’s Theo Huxtable was like a big brother, especially if you didn’t have an actual big brother.
The actor who played him, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, died this week at 54, drowning while on vacation in Costa Rica.
What Theo Huxtable taught us
The character he played taught us – at the height of the steroided action-hero era – what it looked like for a teenager to be cool and vulnerable at the same time. To be silly, smooth, foolish, challenging and loving while growing up in a strict but fun household.
He was a lovable screwup who questioned and tested his parents without being disrespectful. He teased but loved his sisters.
He taught us how to charm, fool, defy, obey and apologize to our parents.
A lot of that may have just been good 1980s sitcom writing.
But it was Warner’s incredible charisma and acting ability that imprinted so many moments on the minds of a generation of TV viewers.
His joy and aspirational spirt poured through the screen, whether he was desperately trying to avoid household chores, enduring his father’s lectures with grace and just the right amount of exasperation, awkwardly trying to impress his older sister’s friends, pantomiming Ray Charles or meeting Stevie Wonder.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner grew up on television
We watched Theo Huxtable and Malcom-Jamal Warner grow up on television, all the while with an infectious smile and just enough attitude to lovingly challenge his tightly wound, intimidatingly brilliant parents.
It can be difficult to celebrate The Cosby Show and the gargantuan influence it had, or even to watch it, since Bill Cosby was accused, dozens of times over, of sexual misconduct.
But the global impact of the brilliant work of that cast can never be erased.
That Cosby outlived Warner is a tough pill to swallow.
A legacy beyond Cosby
Warner went on to rack up more than 100 television and film credits.
Many of them were roles and productions that broke stereotypes and portrayed complex Black men, Black households and American families in general.
It’s easy to celebrate Warner’s career, and his legacy.
But for ‘80s kids all over the world mourning his loss, Malcolm-Jamal Warner will always be Theo Huxtable, America’s big brother.
Khalil AlHajal is deputy editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact: kalhajal@freepress.com. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and in print.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s death hurts for 80s kids who saw Theo as a big brother | Opinion
Reporting by Khalil AlHajal, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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