When I'm not working, I'm on the road with my band. Or I'm performing in poetry houses doing spoken work. So I've got another passion and another outlet that allows me to be creatively fulfilled and not sitting at home pulling my hair out waiting for the right role to come along.
But there's a huge blessing that comes from being a part of a show like 'The Cosby Show' that sets such a high standard of quality - it touched so many people on so many different levels.
Acting had been a hobby that turned into a career, the directing was a hobby that turned into a career, and music just really allowed me to find another way to express myself. I started playing bass in November 1996, and by June 1998 I was doing my first live show.
Mr. Cosby wanted to do a show not about an upper-middle-class black family, but an upper-middle-class family that happened to be black. Though it sounds like semantics, they're very different approaches.
People kind of have a misconception, because when someone calls me Theo and I correct them, say, 'No, my name is Malcolm,' they think I have an attitude about it and I don't want to be associated with the show.
Being a celebrity can be very intoxicating and very addicting. And I've always been afraid of that, because I've grown up post-almost every child star out there who has gone wayward.
African-Americans are not a monolithic group. So, we tend to talk about the black community, the black culture, the African-American television viewing audience, but there are just as many facets of us as there are other cultures.
A lot of times what happens is, not even just with child actors, but people in general, is they get so caught up in the now. The hot song, the hot TV show, the hot movie. You're not saying 'OK, this is cool, but where am I trying to be 20 years from now?' That's always been in the forefront of my mind.
Acting had been a hobby that turned into a career, the directing was a hobby that turned into a career and music just really allowed me to find another way to express myself.
