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Glenn Gordon Caron, the creator of Moonlighting and a close friend of Bruce Willis, is sharing an update on the actor’s health amid his battle with frontotemporal dementia.
Caron recently told the New York Post that he tries to see the Die Hard star about once a month, and that he does feel that Willis still recognizes him during his visits.
“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” he said. “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.”
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He 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.”
Caron first worked with Willis when he played David Addison Jr., opposite Cybill Shepherd’s Maddie Hayes, in the series Moonlighting, which ran from 1985-89. Since then, the Medium creator said he has remained in contact with Willis, his wife Emma Heming Willis and his three older children, whom he shares with ex-wife Demi Moore.
“I have tried very hard to stay in his life. He’s an extraordinary person,” he told the outlet. “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.”
In 2022, the actor’s family publicly revealed that the Pulp Fiction star was retiring from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia. Earlier this year, they shared that Willis’ condition had progressed to dementia.
Heming Willis gave an update on the 68-year-old actor’s battle last month during an appearance on the Today show, saying that “it’s hard to know” if he fully understands his diagnosis and deteriorating condition.
“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,” she added at the time. “When they say this is a family disease, it really is.”
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