Bruce Willis’s ‘joie de vivre’ is gone, Moonlighting creator says

‘He’s still Bruce’, creator said, despite actor no longer having ‘language skills’

Bruce Willis’s battle with dementia has rendered him “not totally verbal”, Glenn Gordon Caron, the creator of Moonlighting has said, but the “joie de vivre” he was once known for is “gone”.

Last February, the 68-year-old Die Hard star’s family announced he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The news came nearly a year after they revealed he would be “stepping away” from acting following an initial aphasia diagnosis.

Since Willis’s health decline was announced in March 2022, Caron told The New York Post in a new interview that he’s been trying to visit the actor each month.

“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 two worked together on the five-season drama series, Moonlighting – which aired from 1985 to 1989 – and have remained good friends.

“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 Medium creator continued. “He loved life and… just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest.”

Of his visits with The Sixth Sense star, Caron said: “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.

Bruce Willis and wife, Emma Heming Willis (Getty Images for Film at Lincoln)

“All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce,” he added, “but the joie de vivre is gone”.

However, before Willis’s condition had progressed, rendering him as “incommunicative as he is”, Caron said he was able to tell the actor about his hope of getting their hit ABC series “back in front of people”.

For the first time ever, the show is now available to stream in its entirety on Hulu in the US.

“I know it means a lot to him,” Caron added.

Willis co-led the comedy-drama series opposite Cybill Shepherd. His starring role as snarky Blue Moon Detective Agency employee David Addison went on to win him his first Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in 1987.

The Armageddon star’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, has since been vocal in raising awareness for dementia on social media and frequently hosts Instagram live chats with health experts and fellow carers.

When she first announced Willis’s “cruel disease”, in a joint statement with the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, Emma described it as “the most common form of dementia”.

The couple have been married since 2009 and share two young children: Mabel, six, and Evelyn, four. Willis has three older children – Rumer, 35, Scout LaRue, 32, and Tallulah, 29 – from his first marriage to actor Demi Moore.