They Grow Up So Fast
Former Cosby Show star Malcolm-Jamal Warner talks about his famous TV dad, his new BET family and his unceasing love of music

by DeMarco Williams

Of Nielsen’s top 10 scripted shows from the last week of December, three had African-American actors in lead roles: NCIS: Los Angeles (LL Cool J), Person of Interest (Taraji P. Henson) and CSI: NY (Hill Harper). While far from overwhelming, that fact is somewhat refreshing. The Cosby Show, NBC’s iconic take on the upper middle class from a black lens, laid much of the groundwork for the change we’re starting to see on the tube.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Theo from Cosby, is still getting his hands dirty as he works for change on the channels. Reed Between the Lines, the BET sitcom where Warner plays a dedicated doctor/husband/father in a busy house of five, just completed its first season. Some critics say the show isn’t funny enough. Supporters argue that it sacrifices cheap laughs to hit on pertinent urban issues Mike & Molly simply wouldn’t understand. Warner leaves the debating to others and focusing on the show being renewed for a second season.

Why do you think it has taken so long to see a program where you have a stable African-American household, the man isn’t cheating, two hard-working folks, good kids. Why has that taken so long to come on TV?

When you’re doing a situation comedy that has to be funny week-in and week-out, there are a well of resources that you know always work for a sitcom and, oftentimes, writers have to dip into that well to make sure that their comedy works. When it comes to a black situation comedy, that well of resources is even more shallow and people are so conditioned to seeing black people be funny in one way that the challenge becomes how do we make these people funny without making them stereotypically funny.

Right.

Even working on Cosby and looking at how much work Mr. Cosby put into making sure that the show was not stereotypically funny. I watched him for eight years and it is a challenging road to take to do a comedy where the humor is neither based on being black, nor based on typical black sitcom humor.

I watched an episode where your step-daughter permed her hair for a young man’s attention and just looking at episodes like that and it kind of struck me like, “I’ve never seen this kind of subject matter on TV.”

It is great that we have the opportunity to do stories that other shows have not done yet. We have a great episode that aired, a sex episode about this girl wanting to have sex with Keenan, our son. It was a really wonderfully handled episode and it was a storyline, like the hair episode, we have never seen on TV before. So that’s the exciting and gratifying part. We’re looking to fill a particular gap.

I like Reed Between the Lines, but I also watch shows like Community and 30 Rock.  Community is one of my favorite programs and I loved it when you guest starred. Tell me some of the major differences between working with both BET and NBC.

BET is a smaller agency and a little more hands on, you really have direct access because oftentimes a network and producers can not necessarily be on the same page. With the hierarchal process, it is sometimes really hard to get to the people at the network you need to get to figure out how to solve certain issues. Being at BET, it makes it a little bit easier to have access to the powers that be to solve certain stumbles.

Would a show like Reed Between the Lines ever be considered for NBC today?

I don’t know. It is a challenging show to do and I think you have to have people who are solidly invested in the integrity of how you treat a show that is perceived as a “black show.” Mr. Cosby had the clout to make sure that everyone at NBC had a certain sensitivity to the images of people of color they were putting on the airwaves with that show. So, I think, without a Mr. Cosby or someone with that kind of clout, either in front of the camera or behind the camera, properly handling the images of people of color, I think it is really difficult to get that on one of the major networks and have it maintain the integrity.

I know the season finale is coming up, what are the prospects for Season 2?

We finished at the end of the season and, just like every show when they come to the end of the season, we’re in limbo waiting to hear word on the second season. Even when we were on Cosby, there was always that limbo period. You never want to assume or take for granted that you’re coming back for a second season.

Malcolm, why don’t we see you much on the big screen?

I’m trying, brother. I’ve done some stuff but I haven’t really broken into that field the way I would love to. I haven’t really cracked the feature film arena yet not because I don’t want to, it just hasn’t happened yet. But I’m still working on it.

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