Jaleel White Reacts to Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s Death

Jaleel White is at “a loss for words” following the sudden passing of his close friend and fellow child actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner.

Warner died in a drowning accident while on a family vacation in Costa Rica on Sunday at the age of 54, his death sparking an outpouring of tributes from his Hollywood peers.

“Malcolm and I were industry peers,” White told Extra at the premiere of Happy Gilmore 2. “I mean, really, I can’t even say that. Like, I grew up looking up to him. He was ahead of me in the game. I’m kind of waiting for more details to come out because it was just a very disturbing report, just accidentally this — you kind of caught me at a loss for words.”

Warner and White met in the ‘90s on the set of Family Matters through late actress Michelle Thomas, who appeared on The Cosby Show as the girlfriend of Warner’s Theodore Huxtable. At the time she appeared as the on-screen girlfriend of White’s Steve Urkel on Family Matters just a few years later, she and Warner were dating, White previously recalled in his 2024 memoir, Growing Up Urkel, per Entertainment Weekly. The two quickly sparked a close friendship, with the star telling Extra how “Malcolm was the first former child actor that my mother even let me go out with late at night past 11 p.m., and I had a very close relationship with both him and Michelle Thomas,” who died of cancer at the age of 30 in 1998.

Reflecting on those late nights with White and Tomas in his memoir, White recalled how Warner “would visit the set from time to time, and on one given night after a live audience taping, Malcolm and Michelle invited me to join them at a music-industry party that went late into the evening.”

“Off I went into the back seat of Malcolm’s Mercedes as a happy third wheel,” he wrote. “It never dawned on me to drink a drop of liquor that evening, as my mother would be waiting up for me the moment I walked in the door. Just being out late at night, feeling grown and independent was memory enough.”

As he paid tribute to Warner following his tragic passing, White urged fans to “remember him as a poet, a Grammy award-winning musician, and an actor who did a lot more than just star on a sitcom when he was a kid.”

Outside of The Cosby Show, Warner also starred in Malcolm & Eddie, Reed Between the Lines, Major Crimes, Suits, The Resident, 9-1-1, and Alert: Missing Persons Unit, among numerous others.