Jalen Rose goes to sitcom school with Malcolm-Jamal Warner

nypost.com:

Malcolm-Jamal Warner was about 7, he made a prediction.“I told my parents that I was going to either be a famous poet, a famous actor or famous basketball player,” he told me on this week’s “Renaissance Man,” adding, “so don’t ask about my game.”We all know Malcolm-Jamal went on to play Theo Huxtable on iconic sitcom “The Cosby Show.” But he’s also a musician, a poet and, most recently, starred on Fox’s anthology “Accused.” So, there’s plenty to talk about without bringing up his jump shot.

He’s the definition of a renaissance man.Malcolm-Jamal’s father went to Langston Hughes’ alma mater, Lincoln University, with poet Gil Scott-Heron.

And his dad always ensured he always had a foot in the arts and the intellectual world — something that also colored his taste in sitcoms.“Everybody loved ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ and ‘The Jeffersons’ and ‘Sanford and Son’ and I watched them because, like everyone else, I was starved to see people who look like me on television.

But like the show that as a kid that really rocked it was ‘Benson,'” he told me. “Benson was always the smartest dude in the room.” He then, of course, starred on “The Cosby Show,” which not only changed America, but “legitimized” the black middle class, which had always been there. “To be able to be a part of the thing that changes the way the entire world looks at us, there’s a sense of pride, definitely pride and also gratitude,” he said, adding that while he enjoyed the celebrity of being on the show, it also shaped his conduct.“I was not just a reflection of my own mother and father, but I was a reflection of Mr.