While social media beef and Twitter fights are all well and good, lovers of celebrity gossip know the best drama can be found in the long-term actor feuds that have been going on for decades.
Take, for example, Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd.
The pair’s feud began when they both starred in the beloved ’80s TV series Moonlighting, fuelled by diva antics and an alleged secret relationship. Behind-the-scenes stories tell of petty behaviour that would put Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj to shame.
With the series recently being added to Hulu, the former co-stars’ turbulent relationship is making its way back into the limelight.
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In 2022, Shepherd opened up about her first impressions of Bruce following his family’s announcement he would be retiring from acting due to his aphasia diagnosis.
“I just have to say one thing about Bruce,” she told Extra in May last year.
“No one else was ever considered for the part when he walked in the room. My temperature went up 10 degrees.
“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.”
Shepherd then shared that she “will always love Bruce.”
In light of her recent comments, here’s everything we know about Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, and the feud that’s spanned decades.
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The initial chemistry
Everyone who has watched Moonlighting knows David Addison (Willis) and Maddie Hayes (Shepherd) were the OG will-they-won’t-they TV couple. Everyone wanted them to get together.
When the show started filming, Willis hadn’t yet exploded as a blockbuster film star. Die Hard was still three years off, and he was grateful for the role on Moonlighting, according to a producer on the show.
Crew members say he was funny and laid-back, but when his fame started to grow, he was ready to move onwards and upwards. Apparently this was when his relationship with Shepherd became strained.
Moonlighting co-star Curtis Armstrong released a book a few years ago, Revenge Of The Nerd, in which he spilled a lot of behind-the-scenes goss about the pair.
He stated things pretty plainly: “Yes, Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepard hated each other.”
In his book, Armstrong describes Bruce as a “partier” and a “swinger.” The first time the pair met, Willis was hungover and barely dressed.
“He’d been in a club most of the night and overslept. Rather than shower, he just fell naked into his swimming pool, threw some clothes on and actually arrived at his call time.”
Meanwhile, Shepherd had a bit of a reputation for being a diva. Apparently, “if anyone ever said no to her, they were gone. That’s why she was the way she was”.
Armstrong says that after Season 2, Shepherd allegedly threatened to leave the show unless show creator Glenn Caron was fired – and, if reports are to be believed, she got her way. Caron left the show.
The rumoured affair
Shepherd has said that her relationship with Willis started off pretty great — the couple had great chemistry which came across in their scenes.
In an interview with EW, Shepherd said that during the casting process she did script readings with 17 actors before Willis. “And I felt no spark with them. But with Bruce, the temperature in the room went 20 degrees higher. For me, anyway.”
She went on to say point-blank that the pair ended up hating each other, but didn’t give a reason why.
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It’s never been confirmed, but many rumours have swirled that the whole reason for the long-standing feud is that the actors hooked up in the early days of the show.
“[Bruce] intimated to me that there had been one disastrously ill-conceived ‘thing’ between him and Cybill, early on in the show’s run,” Armstrong wrote in his book.
“While not going into explicit details, he made it clear that that kind of mistake was one I should be sure never to make.”
The beginning of the feud
As the show went on, Willis and Shepherd’s relationship just deteriorated more and more.
Crew members had to “measure the distance between their two trailer doors to the stage entrance, so one actor wouldn’t have to walk even a foot farther than the other,” according to Armstrong.
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Shepherd’s pregnancy made scheduling and filming difficult, which angered Willis, who had to work longer hours to compensate.
According to a producer, Shepherd also had worries about how she looked on camera as she was ageing. “[We would] try to shoot her out of scenes,” he said.
“That made Bruce work later. So there was some resentment about that. It was a constant give and take with both of them.”
Some scenes with the pair were shot with body doubles so they didn’t have to be together.
Apparently, at one point the pair were filming a particularly heated scene which turned into a real-life fight between the actors.
“The scene broke down and some sort of dispute began,” Armstrong wrote in his book.
“It escalated rapidly, ending with Cybill flinging a briefcase against the door with a force that shook the set.”
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According to Armstrong, both of them acted like divas, refusing to be on set for a second longer than they needed to.
That they would come and read through their lines then leave immediately, before the guest stars even had a chance to rehearse with them.
But despite them both acting up in this way, Armstrong describes a real boys club atmosphere on set, where Shepherd was seen as a ‘bitch’ but Willis as just one of the team.
By the time they filmed the show’s series finale after five years, things were so bad that the stars apparently couldn’t look each other.
Armstrong claims that the show’s editors had to “artificially slow down to give the impression that they were looking into each other’s eyes.”
After Moonlighting
It’s hard to know exactly what happened between the pair to cause such a giant blow-out that lasted for so long. Though, as is the case with most celebrity feuds, it might have just been a battle of the egos.
Since the show wrapped in 1989, the two stars have had basically no contact — but of course, they’re often asked about the feud in interviews.
A year after the end of the show, Willis made it clear they were no longer in contact, but didn’t have anything bad to say of his co-star.
In 2005, when Shepherd was asked about their frosty relationship, she didn’t hold back. “I remember at one point in the show, it had gotten to where we just hated each other.”
In 2018, nearly three decades after the show aired, Shepherd took part in Willis’ Comedy Central Roast. In her hilarious speech, she said: “Our characters on Moonlighting weren’t much of a stretch. I played a former model, which I was, and he played an a–hole, which he is… I know we haven’t had a conversation in 30 years, but we’ll always have something more important: residuals.”
Given Roasts are generally done in good nature, all the signs suggested the pair were at least amicable years on.
In May 2022, Shepherd shared a rare comment about Willis following the announcement of his aphasia diagnosis earlier in March.
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Willis’ family shared a joint statement to his Instagram account confirming the action star would be “stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him” amid his health struggles.
Speaking to Extra, Shepherd revealed that she “will always love Bruce.”
“I just have to say one thing about Bruce,” she said.
“No one else was ever considered for the part when he walked in the room. My temperature went up 10 degrees,” she added, referring to his Moonlighting audition.
“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.”
In 2023, Shepherd doubled down on her comments, telling Entertainment Tonight the pair “had the chemistry” after Willis walked in the room to audition.
While the actress said the co-stars “came close”, she confirmed they “did not act on” their palpable chemistry.
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Willis’ family have since revealed that the actor received a further diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
Speaking to New York Postn October 2023, Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron shared that in light of his health diagnosis, Willis is now “not totally verbal”.
The creator said despite not verbally communicating, he knows Willis is excited about the series streaming on Hulu.
“I know he’s really happy that the show is going to be available for people,” Caron said.
“The process [to get Moonlighting onto Hulu] has taken quite a while and Bruce’s disease is a progressive disease, so I was able to communicate with him, before the disease rendered him as incommunicative as he is now, about hoping to get the show back in front of people,” he added.
“I know it means a lot to him.”