Bruce Willis is now “not totally verbal” following his frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis earlier this year. In an interview with the New York Post, Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron shared an update on the Die Hard actor’s health, revealing that while Willis’s ability to communicate has declined, “he’s still Bruce.”
“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” Caron told the outlet. “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.”
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Caron said that amid the actor’s health struggle – Willis was diagnosed with the language disorder aphasia in 2022 before his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis earlier this year – he attempts to visit Willis every month, though he admitted, “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. 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 [joy of living] than he. He loved life and … just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest,” Caron shared, adding that it’s as though the actor “now sees life through a screen door.”
Caron worked with Willis on the five-season drama series, Moonlighting, which aired from 1985 to 1989. Caron said that before the actor’s condition progressed to the point where he was as “incommunicative as he is,” he was able to tell Willis about his hope of getting their hit ABC series “back in front of people.” In the series, Willis starred as Blue Moon Detective Agency employee David Addison opposite Cybill Shepherd. The role won him his first Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in 1987. With the series now streaming on Hulu, Caron said, “I know he’s really happy that the show is going to be available for people.”
Nearly one year after he announced his retirement from acting due to aphasia, Willis’ wife Emma Emma Heming Willis, ex-wife Demi Moore, and children Rumer Willis, 35, Scout Willis, 32, Tallulah Willis, 29, Mabel Willis, 11, and Evelyn Willis, 9, shared in a joint statement that the actor was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. In the months since, the family has continued to be vocal in raising awareness for dementia, with his wife sharing during an appearance on the Today show just last month, “what I’m learning is that dementia is hard. 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.”
