Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron has been making a point to visit Bruce Willis as much as possible as the actor’s frontotemporal dementia progresses.
“My sense is the first one to three minutes [into my visit] he knows who I am,” Caron, 69, told the New York Post of Willis, 68, on Wednesday, October 11. “He’s not totally verbal; he used to be a voracious reader — he didn’t want anyone to know that — and he’s not reading now. All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”
Caron, who worked with Willis on Moonlighting from 1985 to 1989, noted that he still catches glimpses of the actor he knew decades ago. (Willis played David Addison Jr. alongside Cybill Shepherd’s Maddie Hayes on the Emmy-winning series.)
“When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there,” Caron explained, adding, “but the joie de vivre is gone.”
Willis’ family announced in March 2022 that he would be stepping away from acting after being diagnosed with the language disorder aphasia. In February, Willis’ ex-wife, Demi Moore, revealed that the Six Sense actor’s diagnosis had been updated to include frontotemporal dementia (known as FTD), for which there is no treatment.
Throughout his health battle, Moore, 60, has been vocal about her support for Willis, whom she was married to from 1987 to 1998. The exes’ three daughters, Rumer, 35, Scout, 32, and Tallulah Willis, 29, have also been there to help their father as much as possible.
Bruce’s inner circle also includes his wife, Emma Heming Willis, whom he wed in 2009, and their two daughters, Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, 9. Last month, Heming Willis, 45, gave fans an update on her husband’s condition in honor of World Frontotemporal Dementia Awareness Week.
“What I’m learning is that dementia is hard. It’s hard on the person diagnosed,” she shared on the September 25 episode of the Today show. “It’s also hard on the family, and that is no different for Bruce or myself or our girls. When they say that this is a family disease, it really is.”
Heming Willis explained that it feels like a “blessing and [a] curse” to know Bruce’s official diagnosis because she can “finally understand what was happening so that I can be into the acceptance of what is.”
She noted that despite his declining health, Bruce is the “gift that keeps on giving” for his loved ones. “There’s so many beautiful things happening in our lives. It’s just really important for me to look up from the grief and the sadness so that I can see what is happening around us,” Heming Willis added. “And Bruce would really want us to be in the joy of what is. He would really want that for me and my family.”
Caron, for his part, revealed on Wednesday that he has been keeping Bruce in the loop while working on getting Moonlight onto Hulu. “I know he’s really happy that the show is going to be available for people, even though he can’t tell me that,” Caron told The Post. “When I got to spend time with him we talked about it and I know he’s excited.”
The filmmaker shared that he has “tried very hard to stay” in Bruce’s life over the years and that hasn’t changed.
“He’s an extraordinary person. The thing that makes [his disease] so mind-blowing is [that] if you’ve ever spent time with Bruce Willis, there is no one who had any more joie de vivre than he,” Caron continued. “He loved life and … just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest. So the idea that he now sees life through a screen door, if you will, makes very little sense. He’s really an amazing guy.”
Aww Brucie. You can tell how great a guy he is by how close he is with Demi still.