Launching the California African American Museum’s Duets & Dialogues series, television legend Bill Cosby and his TV son, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, came together recently for an unforgettable night of laughs, memories and words of wisdom.

“Our program is designed to pair African-American celebrities of note and accomplishment in a setting that allows the easy flow of memories and thoughtful examinations of the present and the future,” said CAAM executive Charmaine Jefferson. “For so many of us, [Bill] Cosby is a pivotal role model within the African American community and beyond. His television role as father to Theo … continues to speak volumes to generations of sons and fathers, and Mr. Cosby regularly uses his celebrity to keep asking our young people to be all that they can be.”

Cosby (wearing his iconic Playboy Jazz Festival T-shirt with his signature yellow-gold Greek Omega Psi Phi fraternity baseball cap) and Warner (stylishly dressed in a peach-colored dress shirt and a black pinstriped dress coat) kept the audience of about 100 guests riveted for about two hours, with a meandering discussion that included poignant reflections of their journeys through pop cultural history, race and education, “The Cosby Show’s” longevity and the importance of self-empowerment.

Warner, who credits his work ethic to watching Cosby for eight seasons, turned to the man who played his father for nearly a decade and told him, “No one could have done that show, but Mr. Cosby.”

It wasn’t really until the run of his own show, the UPN sitcom “Malcolm & Eddie,” that Warner said he understood who Cosby was and what he did to keep “The Cosby Show” running for so long.

“I figured I was a graduate student of the school of Bill Cosby,” said Warner about putting his own show together. “But then I realized that I was fighting a big machine … a monster that was so much bigger than I ever imagined, and that was when I realized that no one could have done ‘The Cosby Show,’ other than Mr. Cosby.”

Though the show was — and continues to be — widely praised for its lack of stereotypical imagery, Warner said the writers do not deserve the credit. “There was none of that not because the writers weren’t having it — it was because Mr. Cosby wasn’t having it,” he said.

That was the fun part about doing the show, Cosby interrupted Warner. “To be able to grab a writer and say, ‘Come here!’ [when they would write something I didn’t like],” he said signaling out to the audience. “‘No one is going to do this And they would say, ‘But I think…,’ and I would say ‘I don’t care what you think.’ And they would go back and redo it. … Then they would try to put it in again later, and it still wouldn’t happen,” Cosby recalled. It got even more entertaining, Cosby joked, when the writers started telling on one another.

Unfortunately, being a graduate of Cosby U wasn’t enough for Warner during the development of “Malcolm & Eddie.”

“That’s when you develop another appreciation for the work that this man did for this show,” Warner said. “Mr. Cosby always made everyone ultra-aware of the images of people of color being put on the airwaves.” And now as an adult, Warner said, he can look back and say that for eight years, he remembers “watching this man fighting for the integrity of this show.” In essence, Warner said, during “Malcolm & Eddie” he was told in so many words, “Hmmm? You’re not Bill Cosby.”

“I found myself fighting all of the time, and the monster that I was fighting was so much bigger than me,” Warner said. “I couldn’t do it … I couldn’t make those changes [like Mr. Cosby] did, so I started playing music.”

Cosby told the audience that it was a pleasure to have worked alongside Warner for all of those years and even today, he is very proud of his TV son’s accomplishments. It’s an absolute pleasure to take Warner’s calls, Cosby joked, because “he doesn’t call me to ask for money.”

With Father’s Day still near, Cosby told the audience that they needed to celebrate every single “hands-on” father they knew, because they are rare, he said.

The dialogue between the men and their audience ricocheted between topics like the importance of fatherhood, good parenting skills and education, to the devastating effects of some rap music, distasteful comedians, today’s child-on-child violence, teen pregnancy, and why if people don’t stop and say “That’s enough,” things will never change.

“Parents have to stop giving their children money to pay for music that these ignoramuses and poverty pimps put out just to get your money. … You have to just say this stuff has to stop,” Cosby said. “No one can stand tall when you’re talking about the mistreatment of your women.”

Another stereotype that irks Cosby is the label put on kids from inner cities.

“They call them disadvantaged kids or at-risk kids,” Cosby said. “But you know what color those kids are. … You’ve just got to say, I’ve seen this movie before, it’s gotta stop.”

Parenting was another hot topic for Cosby.

Parents nowadays confuse parenting with being a friend, he said. When children are already growing up in a densely populated, lower-income communities, “sho’nuffically” they are in harms way, every second of every day. The first thing parents need to do, Cosby said, is to “turn the TV off.”

Cosby talked about his own childhood and his own father’s parenting style. “Back in my day, there was real parenting going on — when parenting was, ‘Where is your homework and I want to see it,’” he said, referring to how parents today wonder why their children are falling back. Cosby talked about how his father was drunk when he would get home from school. “I knew, but I knew I had to listen in class, because I knew when I got home, he was going to ask me.” He didn’t care, Cosby said, but he asked.

Warner was asked how he was able to continue his art after the landmark show ended. “I have to say it started off with good parenting,” Warner said looking over at Cosby, who got up and jokingly started walking away. “When you’re working with Mr. Cosby, you can’t help but think about longevity. We worked three-and-a-half day weeks and the rest of the days Mr. Cosby would go to Vegas or Tahoe to do his stand-up. And he was right back to work on Monday morning, always on time, and he never missed a day of work because he was tired. For us, for me, that set a precedent — that no matter how big this show was, you had to think about life after the show.”

Plus, Warner said, he had this maniacal obsession with not wanting to grow up to be one of those “Where are they now kids … I never wanted this show to be my end-all.”

Warner, who is a poet, spoken-word artist and composer, has indeed carved out his own niche as an adult, including garnering critical acclaim for his one-man show, “Love and Other Social Issues.” Warner talked about how he will not do any work that will cause his people embarrassment. And that when he does music, he doesn’t dumb it down, he said.

“That’s credited to a consciousness Cosby created and instilled in me … and in everybody on the show,” Warner said.

Cosby shared with the audience a bit of history straight out of Warner’s audition for the part of Theo. “Malcolm was the consummate son to Cliff and Claire,” Cosby said, adding that Warner’s real-life respect for his own mother was what got him the role. Cosby told the audience that when Warner auditioned, he did it was a bit of an attitude. “Do you speak to your mother like this,” Cosby said he asked Warner, who had a hand on his hip. “No sir,” Warner told Cosby. “Then go back out the door and come back in,” Cosby said he told Warner. “Well, he went out there to talk to his mother and he came back in and he got the part. … I don’t know what she did, but she did something to him when he went out there.”

Asked how parents could best cultivate creativity in their children, Cosby said, “By listening to them when they’re 7. And take away that thing they press buttons on all day long and give them a cardboard box. Put them in a room with a cardboard box and you’ll see what they come up with.”

Children should also be allowed to run around and play in the dirt, he said. “And turn the TV off,” he repeated. “When your child says that he or she is bored, then that’s because you haven’t given them anything to do.” Cosby also the audience that parents need to whatever it takes to get their kids off the streets. As for the popular video game “Grand Theft Auto,” he said, “it has this thing called a reset button and they [kids] keep resetting it … well, take it out of their hands, because they’re just resetting their way to prison.”

Topping the evening off was a question from Kiya Roberts, an aspiring actress who asked what she could do to portray positive images of African-Americans through her work in an industry that too often devalues such content.

Warner told the young actress to just make sure she has a back-up plan, because acting means long periods of unemployment between jobs. “It’s the reality,” he said.

The void of actors of color in Hollywood is hard to miss. And while he may have been the last lucky one, Cosby praised individuals who came after him — like Robert Townsend and Tyler Perry — for not sitting around and waiting for others to give them work. “Whether you agree with it or not, they’re doing it,” Cosby said. “Copy it and do it.”

Being lectured by Cosby was just like being lectured by her own father back at home in Washington, D.C., said Roberts.

While some kids wished they had a dad like Cliff Huxtable, Roberts said she was lucky to have one at home while growing up. Still, she said, it was calming to hear Cosby’s words of encouragement.

“It can be hard,” she said about working as an actress. “There’s no process for us. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, there’s a succession of steps. But with art, there is no right or wrong … and the rejection can become too much sometimes. … Being here today, reminded me that I have to learn to make my own dreams come true, instead of waiting for someone to hand them to me.”

She said she knows what the reality is, “It’s just so hard to try to bring to your craft the integrity you learned from watching Claire Huxtable.”