{"id":140328,"date":"2025-08-12T18:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/140328\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T18:26:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:26:12","slug":"danielle-spencer-dee-from-whats-happening-dead-at-60","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/140328\/","title":{"rendered":"Danielle Spencer, Dee From What\u2019s Happening!!, Dead at 60"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what&#8217;s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Danielle Spencer, the actress who played Raj\u2019s sarcastic little sister Deadra \u201cDee\u201d Thomas\u00a0on What\u2019s Happening!!, died Monday. She was 60 years old.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The news was posted by her former What\u2019s Happening!! co-star Haywood Nelson on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/haywoodnelsonofficial\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Instagram<\/a> Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><strong>More from TVLine<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cDr. Dee, our brilliant, loving, positive, pragmatic warrior, without fail, has finally found her release from the clutches of this world and a body,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe celebrate Danielle Spencer and her contributions as we regret to inform her departure and transition from a long battle with cancer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cWe have lost a daughter, sister, family member, What\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Spencer played Dee, the precocious and meddling younger sister on\u00a0What\u2019s Happening!!, for three seasons beginning in 1976. Loosely based on the 1975 film\u00a0Cooley High, the series started out as a summer replacement on ABC. After it ended, a spinoff of the show titled\u00a0What\u2019s Happening Now!!\u00a0was ordered, running from 1985 to 1988. Spencer reprised her role, recurring as a college-aged Dee for 16 episodes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In 1996, she pivoted from acting and became a veterinarian, and though she considered herself to be semi-retired from the business, she still occasionally acted. Her other TV credits include The Brady Bunch Hour and Days of Our Lives. She also played a vet in the 1997 James L. Brooks movie As Good As It Gets.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"TV Stars Who Died in 2025\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"650\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/83a0740b58c85e2448400cb55b004a62.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>TV Stars Who Died in 2025<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">TV Stars We Lost in 2025<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a class=\"link \" href=\"https:\/\/tvline.com\/gallery\/tv-stars-died-2025-celebrity-deaths\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:View Gallery57 Images;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\">View Gallery57 Images<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><strong>Best of TVLine<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Sign up for <a href=\"https:\/\/cloud.email.tvline.com\/signup\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:TVLine&#039;s Newsletter;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">TVLine&#8217;s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/31XsHSx\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Facebook;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2TkcoeG\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Twitter;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Twitter<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2TntOHq\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":140329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,24398,83833,171,24399,67,132,68,83834],"class_list":{"0":"post-140328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-danielle-spencer","10":"tag-dee","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-haywood-nelson","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-whats-happening-cast"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115017206564140812","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}