Set off Warning: This text comprises references to a person’s loss of life.
Danielle Spencer, greatest identified for taking part in Dee Thomas on the Nineteen Seventies sitcom What’s Taking place!!, has handed away on the age of 60. Based on household spokesperson Sandra Jones, Spencer died Monday, August 11, 2025, at a Richmond, Virginia, hospital after a years-long battle with most cancers.
Based on ABC Information, Spencer turned a family identify as Dee Thomas, the witty and intelligent youthful sister who typically delivered deadpan roasts to her massive brother, Roger ‘Raj’ Thomas and his pals Dwayne Nelson and Freddie ‘Rerun’ Stubbs. Her catchphrase, “Ooh, I’m gonna inform mama,” turned iconic.
The present, which aired on ABC from 1976 to 1979, was among the many first tv sequence to concentrate on the lives of Black youngsters in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood and was impressed by the 1975 movie Cooley Excessive.
Right here’s how Danielle Spencer overcame life challenges
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, and raised in New York, Spencer began performing on the age of 9. What’s Taking place!! was her first credited function. Early within the present’s first season, the then-12-year-old Spencer was concerned in a extreme automotive accident on the Pacific Coast Freeway in Malibu, California. The crash left her in a three-week coma and killed her stepfather, Tim Pelt. She skilled long-term spinal and neurological issues that required a number of surgical procedures through the years.
Regardless of her well being struggles, Spencer pursued schooling and a profession in veterinary medication. She attended the College of California, Davis, and UCLA earlier than incomes a doctorate in veterinary medication from Tuskegee College in 1993. Spencer turned a veterinarian and an advocate for animal rights, whereas sometimes returning to performing, together with a job as a veterinarian within the 1997 Jack Nicholson movie As Good as It Will get.
Tributes from co-stars and legacy
Haywood Nelson, who performed Dwayne on What’s Taking place!!, paid tribute on Instagram, calling Spencer “Dr. Dee, our sensible, loving, constructive, pragmatic warrior.” He added, “We’ve got misplaced a daughter, sister, member of the family, ‘What’s Taking place’ forged member, veterinarian, animal rights proponent and healer, and most cancers heroine. Our Shero. Danielle is cherished.”
Spencer additionally appeared within the Nineteen Eighties reboot, What’s Taking place Now!!, which ran for 3 seasons. She survived a bleeding hematoma in 2018, linked to her 1977 automotive crash, and had been managing mobility points since at the very least 2004. In 2014, she underwent a double mastectomy following a breast most cancers prognosis.
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