Bill Cosby is mourning the loss of his on-screen son Malcolm-Jamal Warner.
“This reminds me of the call I got when I was taping The Cosby Show and I got a call saying that my son, Ennis, had been murdered,” Cosby, 88, told Us Weekly via his rep, Andrew Wyatt, on Monday, July 21. “It’s just devastating.”
Cosby’s son Ennis died in 1997 in a failed robbery attempt at the age of 27, while he and Warner costarred as Cliff and Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992. (In addition to Ennis, Cosby shares kids Erika, Erinn, Ensa and Evin with wife Camille. Ensa died in 2018 at the age of 44 after a battle with cancer. )
Per Wyatt, Cosby said that he and Warner, who was also a Grammy winner, kept in touch and spoke just “three weeks ago about a performance” he did in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“He was so ecstatic about how the crowd received him,” Cosby continued, per Wyatt. “Malcolm was changing the world, humanizing the world through his acting, his music, his poetry and even his new podcast.”
Wyatt told Us that Cosby praised Warner for his ability to a role model to other teenagers, noting, “You never heard anything negative about the child actors from The Cosby Show. No drugs, no alcohol, none of that. Even though I was their TV dad, I never stopped being their father figure.”
News broke on Monday that Warner died at age 54 after drowning in Costa Rica. The President of the Chamber of Tourism and Commerce of the Southern Caribbean shared in a statement that Warner died at the Playa Grande in the Southern Caribbean which has “strong currents and generates many waves.”
A preliminary investigation revealed that Warner “appeared to have entered the sea and was apparently swept away by a current,” per the Judicial Investigation Department in Costa Rica.
ABC News reported that Warner’s cause of death was ruled as asphyxia.
Warner previously referred to Cosby as his mentor. When Cosby was accused of sexual misconduct by more than 60 women in 2015, Warner spoke out about the positive encounters he had with the comedian throughout his life.
“The Bill Cosby I know has been great to me and great for a lot of people,” Warner said in a January 2015 interview with Billboard. “What he’s done for comedy and television has been legendary and history-making. What he’s done for the black community and education has been invaluable. That’s the Bill Cosby I know. I can’t speak on the other stuff.”
He continued: “He’s one of my mentors, and he’s been very influential and played a big role in my life as a friend and mentor. Just as it’s painful to hear any woman talk about sexual assault, whether true or not, it’s just as painful to watch my friend and mentor go through this.”
