Celebrity Deaths: 2025’s Fallen Stars
Hollywood is mourning one of their own.
Danielle Spencer—best known for her role as Dee Thomas on the 1970s sitcom What’s Happening!!—has died, her former costar Haywood Nelson confirmed. She was 60.
While authorities have not shared an official cause of death, Nelson noted that Spencer had a “long battle with cancer” before she passed.
“Dr. Dee, our brilliant, loving, positive, pragmatic warrior, without fail,” Nelson, who portrayed Dwayne Nelson on What’s Happening!!, wrote on Instagram Aug. 12, “has finally found her release from the clutches of this world and a body.”
He added, “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.”
Nelson told The Hollywood Reporter that she died in a Richmond, Va., hospital on Aug. 11, telling the outlet, “She suffered for a very long time but did it with a great deal of courage.”
E! News has reached out to Spencer’s rep for a comment.
While Spencer had spent the last few decades of her life away from Hollywood, she was a fixture on the small screen as Dee on What’s Happening!! for three seasons where she was known for her catchphrase, “Ooooh, I’m gonna tell Mama!”
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She reprised the role again in 1985 as a recurring guest star on the reboot, What’s Happening Now!
But it was her love of animals that led her to her second career as a veterinarian. She attended the University of California, Davis, for veterinary medicine and earned her doctorate degree from the Tuskegee University Veterinary School in 1993.
Spencer practiced for 22 years in California before moving to Richmond in 2014 to be closer to family. That same year she became the first child star to be inducted into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
2014 was also the year Spencer was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I had a lump for at least a year. It wasn’t until I came [to Richmond] that the doctor said, ‘Let’s just biopsy it,’” she told the Richmond Times Dispatch in 2016. “And then I found out.”
Spencer underwent a double mastectomy.
“It was definitely one of the worst times in my life,” she continued. “You feel helpless. You can’t do what you want to do. It leads to depression. I had so much support from friends and family.”
Gregg DeGuire/WireImage
The diagnosis came as quite a shock to Spencer, as she was still recovering from a spinal condition that was discovered in 2003. The spinal issues were likely connected to a 1977 car crash she and stepfather Tim Pelt were involved in, which left Pelt dead and Spencer in a coma for three months.
The spinal injury required surgeons to remove a calcified disc from her back, which left her paralyzed from the waist down.
Thankfully, after years of physical therapy, Spencer was able to walk again.
However issues from the car crash arose again in 2018 when Spencer was experiencing debilitating headaches, requiring an emergency brain surgery to remove a bleeding hematoma that formed during the car accident, according to a GoFundMe created for her at the time.
Despite the hardships, Spencer looked back on her life in a positive light.
“You really have to live life for you at that minute,” she told Hers magazine in 2016, according to THR. “And just try to have fun. Be lighthearted and be happy while you’re here, because you never know when that time is going to end.”
Spencer is survived by her mother Cheryl Pelt and her brother Jeremy.
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