Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 'Cosby Show' actor, dies at 54 in Costa Rica drowning

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the actor who played teenage son Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” has died at age 54 in an accidental drowning in Costa Rica, authorities there said.

Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department said Monday that Warner drowned Sunday afternoon on a beach on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. He was swimming at Playa Cocles in Limon province when a current pulled him deeper into the ocean.

“He was rescued by people on the beach,” the department's initial report said, but first responders from Costa Rica’s Red Cross found him without vital signs and he was taken to the morgue.

Warner created many TV moments etched in the memories of Generation X children and their parents, including a pilot-episode argument with Bill Cosby's Cliff Huxtable about money and an ear piercing he tries to hide from his dad. His Theo was the only son among four daughters in the household of Cliff Huxtable and Phylicia Rashad’s Clair Huxtable on the NBC sitcom, and he would be one of the prime representations of American teenage boyhood on a show that was the most popular in America for much of its run from 1984 to 1992.

He played the role for eight seasons in all 197 episodes, winning an Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy in 1986. For many the lasting image of the character, and of Warner, is of him wearing a badly botched mock designer shirt sewed by his sister Denise, played by Lisa Bonet.