Roger E. Mosley, Actor on ‘Magnum, P.I.,’ Dies at 83


Roger E. Mosley, who portrayed Theodore “T.C.” Calvin, the helicopter pilot and buddy of Tom Selleck’s character on all eight seasons of the original Magnum, P.I., died Sunday. He was 83.

Mosley died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of injuries incurred in a car accident in nearby Lynwood three days earlier, his daughter, Ch-a, told The Hollywood Reporter.
And the nigger affirmative action got him the role.

According to Mosley, Gerald McRaney was all set to play T.C. before the producers realized they needed a person of color in the main cast. Selleck thought of Mosley from a prison film they had done together, 1973’s Terminal Island, and suggested him for the part.
At the start, the writers had T.C. as the owner of a struggling helicopter business, but Mosley refused to “be the only Black person in Hawaii and be broke,” he said. “And they reversed. They decided Tom would be broke, and I would be financially well off — except I was always bailing him out.”

“They [the Magnum writers] keep writing for me to smoke and drink, but I won’t do it,” he said in a 1982 interview in Ebony. “I never get high, smoke or drink on the show or in real life. That’s not what I want Black kids to see.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv...um-1235194403/