Bruce Willis is ‘still Bruce’ despite not being ‘totally verbal’, ‘Moonlighting’ creator says
“Moonlighting” creator Glenn Gordon Caron is still good friends with series star Bruce Willis, who’s battling the neurodegenerative disorder frontotemporal dementia.
“Moonlighting” is now streaming on Hulu, shining a light on Willis, 68, who rose to stardom on the ABC series (1985-89) co-starring Cybill Shepherd.
“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, 69, told The Post of Willis, who retired from acting amid his condition. “When I got to spend time with him we talked about it and I know he’s excited.”
“The process [to get ‘Moonlighting’ onto Hulu] has taken quite a while and Bruce’s disease is a progressive disease, so I was able to communicate with him, before the disease rendered him as incommunicative as he is now, about hoping to get the show back in front of people.
“I know it means a lot to him.”
Caron said he tries to see the “Die Hard’ actor every month or so.
“I’m not always quite that good but I try and I do talk to him and his wife [Emma Heming Willis] and I have a casual relationship with his three older children,” Caron said. “I have tried very hard to stay in his life. 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. He loved life and … just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest.”
He added: “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.”
Caron said he does think that Willis recognizes him when he visits.
“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” he said. “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.”
“When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there,” he noted, “but the joie de vivre is gone.”
All five seasons of “Moonlighting” are now available on Hulu.
