“There’s part of me that I will be able to leave this earth knowing â and people knowing â that I was a good person.” So said Malcolm-Jamal Warner in the last interview he gave before his death.
Warner sat down with Melyssa Ford for the May 21 episode of the “Hot & Bothered” podcast.
Incredibly, the 54-year-old spoke a great deal about his legacy, saying he thinks about it “a lot.”
Warner drowned on a beach vacation with his 8-year-old daughter July 20 in Costa Rica.
In the podcast, the “Cosby Show” actor spoke about his own father, saying that his dad once told him while others love him for his career success, his dad was most proud that Malcolm was a good person.
“I’m a good person because my dad’s a good person,” Warner told Ford. “It is possible to walk through this world and, with all of the darkness in the world, it is possible to maintain your soul and be a good person.”
Malcolm-Jamal Warner Spoke of Young Daughter in Podcast
In the telling interview, which dropped just two months before Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s unexpected death, the actor spoke about his young daughter.
“My daughter will be 8 next month, so I sob a lot. She’ll say something and I’ll go ‘oh my God, that’s me, that’s me,’” he said.
Warner told a story of being in Los Angeles with his daughter, hearing coyotes. When he explained how dogs and coyotes evolved from wolves, the little girl said, “So basically, dogs are colonized wolves not called by their name.”
In telling the story, Warner said, “I sat there, my chest poked out. I brushed my shoulder off and said ‘that right there, that’s my kid.’” he related.
“My dad named me after Malcolm X and Ahmad Jamal, so that’s where it starts. So she gets it honestly,” Warner said with pride.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner Talked About His Legacy
Malcolm-Jamal Warner also acknowledged that part of his legacy would always be tied to “The Cosby Show,” where he rose to fame playing Theo Huxtable for eight seasons from 1984 to 1992.
“I feel like, okay, there’s that legacy there, but then, because I’ve had this full life after that show, there’s another lane of legacy that I get to leave,” he said in the interview. “And I’m still working through that.”
Malcolm-Jamal Warner Shared His Thoughts on Grief
Incredibly, Malcolm-Jamal Warner also talked about grief during the podcast, relating how at age 15, he had been in the room when his beloved grandfather passed away.
“I literally watched him take his last breath,” he recalled. “And if you’ve ever seen someone take their final breath, there’s this peace that comes over them, just washes over them.”
And while Warner said that moment was sad, it also taught him something.
“I realized that when we grieve for people who have passed on, we’re grieving for ourselves, right? Because we miss them. And when I think about people in my life who have gone on and transitioned, I think about the lives that they’ve led. They were really good people,” he said.
“And when we talk about, why are the good people taken away from us, I go, ‘Maybe they’re being rewarded or something,’” said Warner.
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