TV, Stage Actress Roxie Roker Dies

Roxie Roker, who played half of one of TV’s earliest interracial couples when she appeared in “The Jeffersons,” has died, her publicist said Monday. She was 66.

Roker, who played Helen Willis on the 1975-85 CBS comedy, died Saturday, Cynthia Snyder said. Her family, including musician-son Lenny Kravitz, declined to release further details.

Roker appeared off-Broadway while holding down an office job with NBC in New York in the 1960s, then turned to acting full-time and appeared on stage with the Negro Ensemble Company in “Ododo” and “Rosalee Pritchard.”

She won an Obie Award and was a 1974 Tony nominee for her performance as Mattie Williams in “The River Niger.”

Later, Norman Lear cast her in “The Jeffersons,” a spin-off from “All in the Family” that moved the Jefferson family from Archie Bunker’s working-class block in Queens to a luxury high-rise on Manhattan’s East Side.

Roker’s character and her on-screen white husband, Tom (Franklin Cover) were neighbors to George and Louise Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford). The Willis daughter married the Jeffersons’ son, Lionel.

After “The Jeffersons,” Roker returned to the stage, reuniting with her TV castmates for a stage production of “The Jeffersons” and touring with Mary Martin and Carol Channing in “Legends.”