Meshach Taylor

Meshach Taylor (April 11, 1947 – June 28, 2014) was an American actor born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Hertha Mae (née Ward) and Joseph T. Taylor, who served as former dean of students at Dillard University in New Orleans and as the first dean of arts and sciences at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. After the family relocated from New Orleans to Indianapolis, Taylor graduated from Crispus Attucks High School in 1964, where he developed an interest in acting. He subsequently studied dramatic arts at Wilmington College in Ohio and Florida A&M University, though he left Florida A&M short of completing his degree. During that period he worked in Indianapolis as a State House reporter for AM radio station WIFE under the on-air name Bruce Thomas, and hosted a community-affairs program on television station WLWI as Bruce Taylor. He ultimately earned his bachelor's degree in theatre arts from Florida A&M in May 1993.

Taylor's professional acting career began with a national tour of Hair, a production through which he formed a friendship with actor Joe Mantegna that would last decades. He developed his stage craft as a member of Chicago's Goodman Theatre and the Organic Theater Company, working alongside Mantegna, André DeShields, Dennis Franz, Keith Szarabajka, Jack Wallace, and director Stuart Gordon. His Chicago theater work included David Rabe's Streamers, Native Son, The Island, and Athol Fugard's Sizwe Banzi Is Dead. The latter earned him the 1977 Joseph Jefferson Award for Actor in a Principal Role in a Play, and his work in Native Son brought a 1979 Joseph Jefferson Award nomination in the same category. He also received an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Jim in the WTTW production of Huckleberry Finn and hosted the Chicago television program Black Life.

In 1994, Taylor appeared on Broadway in the musical The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast. He returned to Broadway in 1998, making what some sources describe as his Broadway debut as Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast, where he starred alongside Toni Braxton. In September 2012, he appeared at Ensemble Studio Theater-LA in Year of the Rabbit, playing Vietnam veteran JC Bridges.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles in 1977 and built an extensive television and film career. He is perhaps best known for his Emmy-nominated role as Anthony Bouvier, the deliveryman at the Sugarbaker interior design firm in Atlanta, on the CBS sitcom Designing Women, which ran from 1986 to 1993. In 1989 he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for that role. He also portrayed Hollywood Montrose, a flamboyant window dresser, in the 1987 film Mannequin and its 1991 sequel Mannequin Two: On the Move. Following Designing Women, he joined the CBS sitcom Dave's World as plastic surgeon Sheldon Baylor, a role he held from 1993 to 1997. He appeared as Tony on the NBC sitcom Buffalo Bill opposite Dabney Coleman, and played the recurring character Alastair Wright — a social studies teacher who later became school principal — on the Nickelodeon sitcom Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide from 2004 to 2007. In May 1981, he appeared as a corpsman in the final episode of M*A*S*H's ninth season, "The Life You Save."

His additional television credits include The Unit, Jessie, Hannah Montana, All of Us, The Drew Carey Show, Static Shock, Caroline in the City, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Women of the House, In the Heat of the Night, Punky Brewster, What's Happening Now!!, Hill Street Blues, ALF, Melba, The Golden Girls, Cagney & Lacey, Barney Miller, Lou Grant, The White Shadow, The Incredible Hulk, and Barnaby Jones. On the film side, his credits include Damien: Omen II and The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue. In 1996 he hosted The Urban Gardener with Meshach Taylor on HGTV, and in 1998 he hosted Meshach Taylor's Hidden Caribbean on The Travel Channel. He served as a regular panelist on the 2000 revival of the game show To Tell the Truth and co-hosted Living Live! with Florence Henderson on Retirement Living TV beginning in 2008.

Taylor's long friendship with Mantegna led to a guest appearance on Criminal Minds in 2012, in the eighth-season episode "The Fallen," in which he played Harrison Scott, a former Marine sergeant who had served with Mantegna's character Rossi in Vietnam. He reprised the role in the episode "The Road Home," which aired January 22, 2014. Following Taylor's death, Mantegna led a tenth-season episode of Criminal Minds titled "Anonymous," which aired January 21, 2015, in his honor.

Taylor married actress Bianca Ferguson in 1983. He had four children — daughters Tamar, Esme, and Yasmine, and son Tariq — and four grandchildren. He died of colorectal cancer on June 28, 2014, at his home in Altadena, California, survived by his wife, his four children, his mother Hertha Ward Taylor, and two siblings. A memorial service was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills on July 6, 2014.