Talented actor Meshach Taylor has passed on. It was reported over the weekend about his weaken health, but now it is confirmed by his agent on THR.
Meshach spent 7 years of the hit TV show, Designing Women as Anthony Bouvier. He was supposed to appear in one episode, but the chemistry he had with women made the writers think twice.
We also knew Meshach as Hollywood Montrose from the Mannequin films. For some, he was the first example of a gay man... For some of us, he was an example of a Black gay man.
He lived a good life as a actor and a husband. We will greatly miss him.
There's more on Meshach's career after the jump
Earlier, Taylor was a regular on the 1983-84 NBC sitcom Buffalo Bill, which starred Dabney Coleman as an egotistical daytime TV talk show host in Buffalo, N.Y. And later, he played Principal Alistar Wright on the Nickelodeon series Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. He most recently appeared in a pair of episodes this year of CBS' Criminal Minds.
The genial Taylor also hosted his own series on HGTV, The Urban Gardener; co-hosted a show on Retirement Living TV with Florence Henderson; and was a regular celebrity panelist on a reboot of the game show To Tell the Truth. Taylor's TV resume also includes Lou Grant, M*A*S*H, Cagney & Lacey, The Golden Girls, Hill Street Blues, The Drew Carey Show and The Unit, and he reprised the role of Anthony in a 1995 episode of Bloodworth-Thomason's Women of the House sitcom, also starring Burke. Taylor also appeared in such other films as Damien: Omen II (1978), The Howling (1981) and Tranced (2010).
Taylor was born in Boston, raised in New Orleans and attended Florida A&M in in Tallahassee, Fla. He joined the Organic Theatre group in Chicago, where he worked with Joe Mantegna and Dennis Franz, and also became a player with Chicago's famed Goodman Theatre. Smart, Burke, Gerald McRaney, Mantegna, Franz, Shadoe Stevens and Ernie Hudson were among those who gathered to celebrate Taylor's 67th birthday at a party in April. He married actress Bianca Ferguson (General Hospital) in 1983. Other survivors include children Tariq, Yasmine, Tamar and Esme. - See more at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/meshach-taylor-dead-designing-women-715569#sthash.M8HYKwgM.dpuf
3 comments:
Sad news.
I've gotten hooked [again] on Designing Women on LOGO and loving Meshach.
RIP.
He will be truly missed. I loved him as Anthony on Designing Women. He was such as great anchor.
I loved Meshach Taylor. He was funny as the understated foil to the ladies in Designing Women and pumped so much life into Hollywood Montrose... I cried when I heard about his failing health on Friday night.
I will miss him greatly.
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