Moonlighting creator says Bruce Willis is "incommunicative"
Bruce Willis knew Moonlighting was going to come to streaming, and he's happy about it, says Glenn Gordon Caron
Moonlighting finally coming to streaming (on Hulu, to be specific) means that the show can reach a whole new audience. That whole new audience will then be able to appreciate a new side of star Bruce Willis, they may know primarily as an action star. Series creator Glenn Gordon Caron told the New York Post that he knows Willis is “really happy that the show is going to be available for people” even if the actor “can’t tell me that” amid his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.
“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.
“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,” the creator shared. “My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am. 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.”
Heartbreakingly, Caron added, “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.”
Willis was initially diagnosed with aphasia; his family announced the FTD diagnosis earlier this year. The actor’s wife Emma Hemming spoke about his health on Today last month, sharing, “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. Bruce would really want us to be in the joy of what is. He would really want that for me and our family.”