Kelly Ripa, co-host of ABC morning show Live with Kelly And Mark, honored late actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner as the very first guest on the show’s original incarnation, Live With Regis And Kathy Lee, in 1988.
The former soap star, 54, paused the show on Tuesday (July 22) to acknowledge the actor’s passing, as Warner lost his life after drowning during a family vacation in Costa Rica.
“There’s a lot of sad news in the news, so I guess we’ll just get to it and then try to do a hard pivot afterwards,” Ripa told co-host and husband Mark Consuelos. “I can’t believe this, because [producer Michael] Gelman was telling me backstage that the very first episode of this show, Malcolm-Jamal Warner was a guest on.” She then showed a clip of Warner on set with original hosts, Kathy Lee Gifford and the late Regis Philbin, who passed away in 2020.
That original episode aired on Sept. 5, 1988.
THE COSBY SHOW — “Rudy’s All-Nighter” Episode 3 — Air Date 10/20/1988 — Pictured: (l-r) Ella Milenova as Girl in Rudy’s Dance Class, Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Theodore ‘Theo’ Huxtable, Keshia Knight Pulliam as Rudy Huxtable (Photo by NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
After the clip, Ripa continued, “He shockingly and sadly and devastatingly was caught in this surprise high current in Costa Rica and died as a complication of that. It’s just so sad and crushing, and you don’t realize — I literally, even though I didn’t know him, grew up with this man.”
Ripa also noted that they were the same age — both born in 1970 — and that she watched Warner as a teenaged Cosby Show star before she found her own place within entertainment.
“We were 14 years old together, only he was a big TV star and I was watching him,” she shared, adding that she, “sort of followed his entire career and always had a fondness for” him.
“I feel like a piece of all of us passed away. It’s very, very sad,” she added. Check out the clip below.
