Cybill Shepherd “will always love” her Moonlighting co-star Bruce Willis.
The actress praised her small-screen love interest from the 1980s dramedy, which saw them playing private detectives. Her comments follow Willis’s family’s announcement that he has retired from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, a condition where a person loses the ability to communicate.
“I just have to say one thing about Bruce,” Shepherd told Extra over the weekend at the Race to Erase MS gala in L.A. “No one else was ever considered for the part when he walked in the room.”
Bruce played David Addison to her Maddie Hayes and they worked together at Blue Moon Investigations. Their on-camera chemistry made them one of TV’s best couples.
“My temperature went up 10 degrees,” she said of their on-screen magic. “That meant two things to me: One, I was very attracted to him. Two, I would never act on it, ’cause we were both very attracted to each other.”
She added, “I will always love Bruce.”
During Moonlighting — which ran from March 1985 to May 1989 — Bruce married his first wife, Demi Moore, with whom he shares three adult children: Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. They divorced in 2000 and Willis was remarried in 2009 to Emma Heming Willis. They are parents to Mabel and Evelyn.
Emma, Demi and Bruce’s five children released a statement in March saying Bruce would be stepping back from the career he loved due to health reasons. The announcement coincided with a Los Angeles Times report in which nearly two dozen people who had been on set with Bruce in recent years (for mostly straight-to-VOD movies), expressed concern about his well-being. They said he often seemed confused on set, once asking, “Why am I here?”
Bruce’s Moonlighting role helped catapult him to stardom. While he went on to become an action star in the Die Hard franchise, among many other film roles, he will always be remembered for that witty and playful role.
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That wasn’t to say there wasn’t drama between the co-stars. Shepherd, who is twice divorced, once told Entertainment Weekly, “I remember at one point in the show, it had gotten to where we just hated each other.” However she said that volatility made it work, she added.
Shepherd participated in Bruce’s Comedy Central roast in 2018 and made jokes about how they “hated each other” at times making the show, calling their working relationship “explosive.” She also said they hadn’t kept in touch since the show ended. However, she also called him a “brilliant actor” and one of “the finest men I’ve ever known.” After the roasting part was over, they shared a nice hug.
