Actor
Named after Malcolm X and jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, this New Jersey native became interested in acting at the age of 9 and made his TV debut on Matt Houston in 1983. A year later, he was lighting up the small screen as Theodore "Theo" Huxtable on The Cosby Show.

Malcolm-Jamal maintained an incredibly active schedule during the run of the series, not only with guest appearances on A Different World and Tour of Duty but also as the host of CBS' Storybreak. He starred in several special TV and video projects devoted to community awareness, including Time Out: The Truth About HIV, AIDS, and You, The Real Malcom X, Kids Killing Kids, and For Our Children.

Warner had an opportunity to direct an episode of The Cosby Show. He proved to be a natural behind the scenes as well as on-screen, eventually also directing episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel AirK/i> as well as Kenan and Kel.

Character
Theodore Aloysius "Theo" Huxtable (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), is the middle child and only son of Cliff and Clair Huxtable, and is athletic and obsessed with impressing girls, and obtaining a sports car or motorcycle. He is fourteen years old when the series begins, making his birth year 1970. In the pilot episode, he is lectured by his father for not applying himself at school ("I brought you in this world, and I'll take you out"). Also in the early seasons, he was somewhat of a troublemaker, as illustrated through incidents both alluded to and explicitly portrayed in the series, such as letting his best friend's younger sister pierce his ear, resulting in an infected earlobe, but his behavior had improved by the time he left high school.

A running theme of the early seasons revolved around Theo's academic struggles, especially in his sophomore-year geometry class, taught by Mrs. Westlake (Sonia Braga). As the seasons progressed, Theo gradually evolved from being an under-achiever to a successful high school—and college—student (in interviews, Cosby noted a similar change in his real-life son, Ennis). While Theo was a student at NYU, it was revealed that he suffered from dyslexia, a learning disability that inspired him to work harder, and as a result overcame it. By the final season, Theo was a student teacher, helping other children with dyslexia at a local education center. In the show's final episode, he graduated from NYU with a degree in psychology.

In the pilot, and once more in season one (the episode entitled "Bad Dreams"), he is referred to by Vanessa as "Teddy", instead of "Theo."

Theo has a long-running, but on-and-off relationship with a girl named Justine, who is mentioned many times throughout the series, but appears in only nine episodes. During his high school years, Theo's best friend was Walter Bradley (Carl Anthony Payne II), better known as "Cockroach", who was more of a scholastic underachiever than Theo. The two of them would occasionally compose rap songs for various school assignments. When Theo got tickets to "Dance Mania" (a "Soul Train"-like television dance show), and only one of them was allowed into the studio, Theo let Cockroach have the spot, but did not feel good about it when he saw Cockroach on TV, and as the center of their friends' attention the next day at school. This episode marked the final appearance of the character, and Cockroach was rarely mentioned in subsequent episodes.

The character is loosely based upon Cosby's only son Ennis, who was approximately the same age as Theo (and was also dyslexic).