Words matter. These are the best Malcolm-Jamal Warner Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
People kind of have a misconception, because when someone calls me Theo and I correct them, say, ‘No, my name is Malcolm,’ they think I have an attitude about it and I don’t want to be associated with the show.
I planned so well for my post-‘Cosby Show’ life that I don’t have to make desperate acting choices that conflict with what my values.
It’s hard not to look at the road of the media and how the media is a big part of painting a picture for public opinion.
I was doing community theater since I was about nine.
When you’re an independent artist, you need as much play or promotion as you can get.
Mr. Cosby wanted to do a show not about an upper-middle-class black family, but an upper-middle-class family that happened to be black. Though it sounds like semantics, they’re very different approaches.
African-Americans are not a monolithic group. So, we tend to talk about the black community, the black culture, the African-American television viewing audience, but there are just as many facets of us as there are other cultures.
In spite of what some people claim, we are not in a post-racial era. I think it’s still an important issue to bring up.
I never wanted to look back on my career and be embarrassed about work that I chose to do. I never wanted to look at character I’ve done and cringe.
Theater is my favorite platform. Television is my favorite paycheck. The more television I can do, the more theater I can do.
Being a celebrity can be very intoxicating and very addicting. And I’ve always been afraid of that, because I’ve grown up post-almost every child star out there who has gone wayward.
I used to say that it won’t be until I’m 40, 50, 60 years old, still working consistently, will I be able to look back on my career and say, ‘Wow, I have been successful.’
I’ve met men who have been married 19, 20 years, and all of a sudden the wife decides one day she needs to find herself.
I have two main bass guitars, and my main bass is a four-string 1964 Fender Jazz, and I’ve named it Justine.
When I’m not working, I’m on the road with my band. Or I’m performing in poetry houses doing spoken work. So I’ve got another passion and another outlet that allows me to be creatively fulfilled and not sitting at home pulling my hair out waiting for the right role to come along.
I’m trying to break the stereotypical role now of the Theo-type character because, in my post-‘Cosby’ life, as I call it, I don’t want to be known as just the kind of guy who can play a Theo Huxtable-type character. I want to be known as being able to do more things, being able to stretch.
But there’s a huge blessing that comes from being a part of a show like ‘The Cosby Show’ that sets such a high standard of quality – it touched so many people on so many different levels.
My perspective was always being on a number one show doesn’t mean anything if I’m not still working consistently at 40 to 50 and 60 years old.
Our differences – in race, sexual preference, economic – have always been used as distractions to keep us divided. We get so wrapped up in our own stories that we can’t hear each other.
I have accepted that even when Mr. Cosby is long gone, I will still get asked about him.
I don’t belong to a motorcycle club, but I know a lot of guys who do. I ride with some guys who do.
There’s something very surreal about driving a truck, looking in the rearview mirror, and seeing 20 cop cars behind you. Even though you know, ‘We’re just shooting. This is just a scene; we’re making a movie here,’ it’s very unsettling.
I was definitely acutely aware, the transition of being seen as a child actor to being taken seriously as an adult actor. It’s not always a smooth one.
I would love to play just an all out bad guy who has fun being malicious. It would be totally unexpected, and that’s what would make it exciting. Plus, bad guys don’t see themselves as bad guys, so you could have fun with that.
What’s interesting is, say, the O.J. trial and when the verdict came out, and there were people who celebrated, and there were people who thought that he’s guilty, and it’s a crime. Those reactions tend to be filtered through our own experiences.
