Suzzanne Douglas, a veteran actress most-remembered for her role on the 1990s WB sitcom “The Parent ‘Hood” and who most recently starred in the 2019 Netflix miniseries “When They See Us,” has died.
She was 64.
Her cause of death was not immediately known.
Family members confirmed her passing on social media.
“Suzzanne Douglas, a beautiful and talented actress made her transition today,” her cousin Angie Tee said on Facebook, according to reports. “She warmed our hearts on movie screens and television sets all over the world. This beautiful soul was my cousin.”
Other celebrities posted tributes to the late star on Wednesday.
Douglas was born in Chicago in 1957 and was raised in public housing with three siblings before going on to graduate from Illinois State University, reports said. She later earned a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music.
Throughout the 1980s she appeared on Broadway — in Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” Weill’s “Threepenny Opera” and “The Tap Dance Kid” — before moving on to films and television full time, according to the New York Post.
Between 1989 and 2019, Douglas appeared in numerous TV shows that helped shape American popular culture for more than 30 years, including “The Cosby Show,” “NYPD Blue,” and “Law & Order.”
Her first acting credit came in the 1981 TV adaptation of the musical “Purlie” which ran on Showtime and also starred TV actors Robert Guillaume, best-known from the show “Benson,” and Sherman Hemsley of “The Jeffersons” fame.
Eight years later Douglas landed her first role on the silver screen in the 1989 film “Tap,” starring Sammy Davis, Jr. and Gregory Hines, in which she earned an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress.
From there she went on to appear in several lesser-known titles for film and television before scoring bigger feature roles in the 1994 films “Jason’s Lyric” and “The Inkwell” with Larenz Tate and Joe Morton.
In 1998, she appeared in “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” which was based on Terry McMillan’s best-selling 1996 novel of the same title.
She also appeared in 2003’s “School of Rock,” which starred actor Jack Black.
In her later career she portrayed matriarchal roles primarily on television.
For five seasons, Douglas starred as TV mom Jerri Peterson opposite Robert Townsend on “The Parent ‘Hood” from 1995 to 1999.
She also portrayed Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mother, in the 2015 Lifetime TV biopic “Whitney” alongside Yaya DaCosta.
In the critically acclaimed 2019 miniseries “When They See Us,” Douglas portrayed a mother in the true story about the Central Park Five, a group of Black teenagers who were falsely accused of attacking and raping a white female jogger in 1989.
The film’s director, Ava DuVernay, wrote on Instagram and Twitter that Douglas “was a quiet, elegant force as we made WHEN THEY SEE US. A gentlewoman. A gem of a lady. A confident, caring actor who breathed life into the words and made them shimmer. I’m grateful that our paths in this life crossed. May she journey on in peace and love.”
Douglas is survived by her husband, neuro-radiologist Roy Jonathan Cobb, and their daughter Jordan.
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