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Bruce Willis’ career really took off when he was cast as the lead in the series Moonlighting in 1985. The show ran for five seasons, and Bruce won an Emmy and Golden Globe Award for his role as David Addison. After a long campaign by series creator Glenn Gordon Caron to make the show available on streaming (apparently the delay was due to securing a massive amount of music rights), Moonlighting finally debuted last week on Hulu. Caron has taken the lead on promo for the release, and in his interviews he’s commented on his friendship with Bruce, and how Bruce is doing with the progression of his dementia:
[Glenn Gordon] Caron revealed to The Post Tuesday that he has tried to visit the “Die Hard” actor, 68, almost every month since he was first diagnosed with aphasia — and later dementia — in March 2022.
“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.”
“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,” the director continued. “He loved life and … just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest.”
While Caron knows deep down that Willis is still the same person, he says it’s as if the actor is “seeing life through a screen door.”
“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” he said of his visits with Willis. “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.”
However, before Willis’ condition worsened, Caron was able to tell him that their hit ABC series “Moonlighting” was going to be streamed on Hulu.
“I know that 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. “When I got to spend time with him we talked about it and I know he’s excited.”
Willis got his big break on the Caron-created series in 1985 when he was cast as detective David Addison.
“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,” he continued. “I know it means a lot to him.”
Over the past couple years Bruce’s family has taken great care with how they share updates on his condition. They’ve been consistently thoughtful in protecting his dignity and preserving for the fans the image Bruce built up in his body of work. So I have to say, my gut reaction to Caron’s detailed descriptions of how Bruce is doing now — and they are in multiple interviews he’s given recently — seem a tad invasive. I can believe that Caron has stayed friends with Bruce, and loves him and wants the best for him, but it also feels a little like he’s using Bruce to plug the show. I truly hope he checked in with Bruce’s wife Emma ahead of time, because otherwise Caron has really violated a boundary. (I’m not all that encouraged, though, since the last time we namechecked Caron was when Eliza Dushku wrote an op-ed about the harassment she experienced on the set of Bull from star Michael Weatherly and Caron, who was showrunner.) Am I being too sensitive, or did you all get a similar vibe here? Aside from that, this is what really leapt out at me from the article: “He used to be a voracious reader — he didn’t want anyone to know that…” Say what now? Voracious readers of the world, be proud!!
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