‘Moonlighting’ Creator Told Bruce Willis About the Show’s Streaming Debut Before Actor Became ‘Not Totally Verbal’: ‘I Know It Means a Lot to Him’
With “Moonlighting” now available on streaming for the first time thanks to Hulu, series creator Glenn Gordon Caron spoke to the New York Post and confirmed he was able to tell series star Bruce Willis about the show’s streaming resurgence amid the actor’s ongoing frontotemporal dementia (FTP) diagnosis. “Moonlighting,” the Emmy-nominated ABC dramedy that ran for five seasons and 67 episodes in the late-1980s, served as Willis’ acting breakthrough. He plays a wisecracking detective who teams up with a former fashion model (Cybill Shepherd) to solve crimes after she finds herself broke and left with a detective agency as her only asset.
“I know [Bruce is] 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 process [to get ‘Moonlighting’ on to 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.”
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Caron said that he stays in touch with Willis and the actor’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, and he provided a health update on the actor, who retired from the profession after his FTP diagnosis.
“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 said. “He loved life and… just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest.”
“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” he added of his visits to 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, but the joie de vivre is gone.”
Emma Heming Willis appeared on “Today” last month to discuss Bruce’s condition and bring awareness to the disease during World Frontotemporal Dementia Awareness week.
“What I’m learning is that dementia is hard,” Emma said. “It’s hard on the person diagnosed. 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.”
When “Today” anchor Hoda Kotb asked Heming Willis “Does he know what’s going on? Is that something that he is aware of?”, she responded, “Hard to know. It’s hard to know.”
“There’s so many beautiful things happening in our lives,” she added. “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. Bruce would really want us to be in the joy of what is. He would really want that for me and our family.”
“Moonlighting” is now available to stream on Hulu.
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