Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s widow has identified herself for the first time since The Cosby Show actor drowned during a family vacation in Costa Rica in July.
Malcolm-Jamal was deeply private before his death, aged 54, and had not publicly named the woman he married in 2017.
In a statement, Tenisha Warner announced that she was launching a family foundation with their daughter — whose name has also not been shared publicly — and a partner organization called River & Ember, which aims to help parents assist their children through difficult emotions such as grief.
“Thank you for holding us in so much love during this tender time,” she began her post on Instagram alongside a photo of her and Malcolm-Jamal on their wedding day.
“Tomorrow marks our anniversary — and my heart is wide open,” she shared. “For the first time, I’m sharing a glimpse of the love that began it all. I can still hear my husband’s laugh, still feel the way he made room for every part of me — every tear, every dream.”
Announcing the new organisations, she continued: “Today, in his honor, my daughter and I are launching River & Ember and officially opening The Warner Family Foundation.
“Together we carry the legacy my husband and I began—one that nurtures children’s inner light and gives young artists the freedom to create outside the lines. This is love, Still moving. Still making. Still carrying us forward.”
In a second slide, she included a lengthier statement about River & Ember, which she explained came about due to her experience as a doctor of psychology as well as her “own journey with grief and love.”
“My husband believed deeply in tending not only to the inner light in children, but in ourselves,” she wrote. “This company carries forward that belief — offering stories and rituals that honor the quiet power of connection between parent and child.”
She concluded: “To the river that carried us. To the ember that never goes out. Your love was the first story I ever wanted to keep telling.”
Malcolm-Jamal’s official cause of death was asphyxia, after he was caught by a strong current while swimming with his daughter off Cocles, a beach in Limon, on the country’s Atlantic coast.
He was best known for his role as Theo Huxtable in the Eighties sitcom about an upper-middle-class Black American family living in Brooklyn, New York, led by Bill Cosby.
Per Yahoo, he said his wife “got on him” for trying to “distance himself from Theo, as if Theo was a bad thing.”
He continued: “I’m always gonna be Malcolm much longer than Theo. Although to some people I’ll be Theo forever, and I can’t help that.”
The actor starred in The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992, and went on to lead the sitcom Malcolm & Eddie with comedian Eddie Griffin from 1996 to 2000.
More recently, Warner made appearances on comedies including Community and Key & Peele, and starred opposite Tracee Ellis Ross in the 2011 sitcom Reed Between the Lines. From 2018 to 2023, he starred in the Fox medical drama The Resident.
