The Cosby Show’s Malcolm-Jamal Warner sadly passed away at the age of 54 after a drowning incident over the summer, and stars including Angela Bassett and Tracee Ellis Ross (to name just two) wasted no time in paying tribute to the late actor. He had a long list of credits to his name, ranging from the comedy that launched him to fame to dramas like The Resident. Now, the actor’s final performance is coming to the small screen in an upcoming episode of Fox’s Murder in a Small Town Season 2, and leading man Rossif Sutherland recalled the experience of working with him.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s arrival in the fall 2025 TV schedule will happen in early October, and he joins Murder in a Small Town as a guest star. When leads Rossif Sutherland and Kristsin Kreuk spoke with CinemaBlend ahead of Season 2, Sutherland only had the highest of praise for the Cosby Show favorite. He said of Warner:
He’s on the third episode of the show, which airs on October 7. He plays the father of a daughter that he raises on his own, and he’s suspected. He’s the prime suspect for the murder of his ex-wife. He brought so many layers to that character. He really wanted to play somebody who had his heart on his sleeve, all the while the character was portrayed on the page as a quite angry and quite righteous man, for good reason. He was left alone, abandoned by this woman who now dared show up, and now she’s dead, and he’s being accused.
There aren’t necessarily always going to be a lot of layers to characters who only appear in a single episode of a crime show, but that evidently won’t be the case with Malcolm-Jamal Warner in his final performance. I can’t say that I’m surprised; he stood out as a guest star on The Irrational opposite Jesse L. Martin, as just one example. Rossif Sutherland went on:
It’s a place where things change quite a bit, change on the go, and it takes a certain type of actor to be quick on his feet and adaptable, and he was all of that. I wish I’d had more time to speak to him, just as two human beings, instead of just trading off the words scripted to us by writers. But he was a lovely, gentle soul.
Kristin Kreuk revealed that even though she did not work with Malcolm-Jamal Warner during his episode of Murder in a Small Town, “everyone spoke very, very highly” of him on set. The wait to view his episode isn’t too much longer, with Rossif Sutherland’s confirmation that it will air on October 7.
You’ll be able to watch the Murder in a Small Town story featuring Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s final performance on Tuesday, October 7 at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, ahead of a new episode of Doc. If you prefer to stream your television, episodes of the crime drama are available streaming next day with a Hulu subscription. You can find some brief shots of Warner’s character in the video below:
Malcolm-Jamal Warner received an outpouring of tributes in the wake of his death on July 20, including Cosby Show co-star Geoffrey Owens saying that the tragedy left him almost “speechless” and describing him as a “lovely man” with a “sweet and sensitive soul.” More recently, his mother got candid about losing her son and the “indescribable pain that resonated” through her body. Our thoughts here at CinemaBlend remain with his friends, family, and loved ones.
As for Murder in a Small Town, the Fox drama follows Police Chief Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland) and librarian-turned-local politician Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk) in the small town of Gibsons, with a surprisingly high murder rate relative to the population. Season 2 does address that issue early on, however, as well as one concerning Kreuk’s Cassandra. The full first season is streaming on Hulu now.
