‘He’s not totally verbal’: Creator of ‘Moonlighting’ shares Bruce Willis health update

Actor Bruce Willis and “Moonlighting” creator Glenn Gordon Caron remain close friends. The pair worked together on the hit television series for five seasons. Willis, who stepped away from acting in 2022 following an aphasia diagnosis, is “not totally verbal” according to Caron, but “he’s still Bruce,” the director shared with the New York Post.

In early 2023, Willis’ family announced that his condition progressed to frontotemporal dementia.

Early this week, Caron spoke with the New York Post on how he makes an effort to visit “The Sixth Sense” actor at least one time every month.

“I’m not always quite that good but I try and I do talk to him and his wife and I have a casual relationship with his three older children,” Caron told the New York Post. “I have tried very hard to stay in his life.”

According to Caron, the disease has taken away Willis’ joy for life.

“He’s an extraordinary person. 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,” the director continued, per the New York Post. “He loved life and … just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest.”

“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.”

During his visits with Willis, it takes the actor a handful of minutes to recognize Caron, but he still remembers him. Caron says that Willis is no longer able to communicate like he did and explained that it is as if “he now sees life through a screen door.”

“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” Caron told the New York Post. “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.”

Related

• ‘This is a family disease’: Bruce Willis’ wife shares update on his condition

• Bruce Willis’ diagnosis: What is frontotemporal dementia?

Last month, Emma Hemming Willis shared updates on Bruce Willis’ health

In an appearance on the “Today Show” last month, Emma Hemming Willis — wife of Bruce Willis — shared an update on her husband’s health and how the condition has impacted their family.

“Dementia is hard,” Heming Willis said on “Today.” “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 this is a family disease, it really is.”

She added that it is “hard to know” if the actor is aware of his disease.

“There are so many beautiful things happening in our lives, its just really important for me to look up from the grief and the sadness so I can see what is happening around us and Bruce would really want us to be in the joy of what is,” said Heming Willis, per “Today.” “He would really want that for me and our family.”