Former child star Danielle Spencer, who became a household name playing Dee Thomas on the ABC sitcom What’s Happening, died on Aug. 11. Spencer’s friend and costar Haywood Nelson announced the news in an Instagram post on Tuesday.
“Brilliance! It comes in a great many forms. We all have them, and we all have this family’s — Dr. Danielle Spencer (June 24, 1965 – August 11, 2025),” Nelson wrote in his tribute to Spencer. “Dr. Dee, our brilliant, loving, positive, pragmatic warrior, without fail, has finally found her release from the clutches of this world and a body. We celebrate Danielle Spencer and her contributions as we regret to inform her departure and transition from a long battle with cancer.”
Nelson continued, “We have lost a daughter, sister, family member, What’s Happening!! cast member, veterinarian, animal rights proponent and healer, and cancer heroine. Our Shero. Danielle is loved. She will be missed in this form and forever embraced.”
ABC / courtesy Everett
Danielle Spencer as Dee Thomas on ‘What’s Happening’
Nelson told The Hollywood Reporter that the actress-turned-veterinarian died in a hospital in Richmond, Va. “She suffered for a very long time but did it with a great deal of courage,” he told the outlet.
Entertainment Weekly has reached out representatives of Spencer.
According to a GoFundMe page set up to help her pay for her medical expenses, Spencer was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy in 2014 and emergency surgery in 2018 to relieve bleeding on her brain.
Born in the Bronx, N.Y., and raised by her mother, Cheryl, a French teacher, and stepfather, actor Tim Pelt, Spencer began acting at 7 in a repertory company co-founded by Pelt. She mostly booked bit parts before booking What’s Happening! in 1976 when she was 11 years old.
What’s Happening was loosely based on the 1975 film Cooley High, which was written by series creator Eric Monte. All in the Family‘s Bud Yorkin co-produced the sitcom, for which Spencer and her family relocated from the East Coast to Los Angeles.
Spencer played Dee Thomas, the smart-aleck younger sister of Roger “Raj” Thomas (Ernest Thomas) and daughter of Mabel (Mabel King). Her character became known for her catchphrase, “Ooooh, I’m gonna tell Mama!” Nelson played the down-to-earth Dwayne on the sitcom.
Initially a summer replacement that had a successful four-week run, the series ran for three seasons. Almost a decade later, the series was revived as What’s Happening Now from 1985-88. Spencer reprised her role as a college-aged Dee on a recurring basis.
Spencer lost her stepfather in a serious car accident in 1977 during the second season of What’s Happening. The incident also left her in a three-week coma from which she spent six months recovering.
Derek Storm/Courtesy Everett
Danielle Spencer in 2016
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When the original What’s Happening ended its three-season run, Spencer and her family moved to the Ivory Coast before she returned to the U.S. to attend University of California, Davis, to pursue veterinary medicine. Following the cancellation of What’s Happening Now, she attended Tuskegee University Veterinary School in Alabama and became a veterinarian in 1996.
The actress later experienced paralysis due to spinal stenosis and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014, which she overcame after chemotherapy. In the same year, she was inducted into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In 2018, Spencer underwent emergency brain surgery for a bleeding hematoma resulting from the 1977 car accident.
Spencer is survived by her mother Cheryl and her brother Jeremy, a jazz musician.
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