Don Johnson is providing heartfelt assist to his shut pal Bruce Willis.
The “Miami Vice, 75,” star spoke about his bond with Willis and touched on the actor’s battle with dementia throughout a current interview with Leisure Tonight to advertise the midseason debut of his ABC sequence “Doctor Odyssey.”
“We’re best of friends and he’s having a little bit of a struggle right now, and I take this moment to send him love,” Johnson shared, talking of the “Die Hard” star.
Willis’ household revealed in February 2023 that the actor, who will rejoice his seventieth birthday on March 19, was identified with frontotemporal dementia following a earlier aphasia analysis in 2022.
In the identical interview, the “Rebel Ridge” actor additionally appeared again on serving to Willis land his first TV function — on Johnson’s sequence “Miami Vice” — earlier than Willis’ rise to fame on “Moonlighting,” reverse Cybill Shepherd.
“It was his first episodic TV, earlier than ‘Moonlighting,’” Johnson noted, adding that it felt like a full-circle moment seeing Willis’ daughter, Rumer Willis, seem on “Doctor Odyssey.”
“And I knew him from New York, and I’d hang out with him and he was funny,” he continued in regards to the motion star.
Johnson defined how he pushed for Willis to be thought of for a job on “Miami Vice,” saying, “So I called our casting director on ‘Miami Vice’ and I said, ‘You know, there’s a guy over there and I think he’s a struggling actor, and you should bring him in and read him because he’s really funny and I think he’d be good.’”
The casting director introduced Willis in for an audition, and Johnson recalled, “She brought him in and she read him and she cast him for the wife-beater,” joking that he didn’t have to stay his neck out “that far” given Willis’ apparent expertise.
“My instincts were pretty good,” Johnson added.
Rumer, 36, offered an replace on her father’s well being lately in a February 3 look on the U.Ok. speak present “Loose Women,” sharing that Willis is “doing really well.”
“He’s doing great,” she added.
Rumer additionally spoke about how her household — which incorporates mother Demi Moore, 62, and sisters Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 31 — have supported each other throughout Willis’ well being struggles.
“I think what’s so beautiful is the way that we rally around each other is so lovely because we really are a unit,” she mentioned.
Moore, who has remained near Willis since their divorce in 2000, lately informed Selection, “We will always be a family, just in a different form.”
Of Willis’ dementia battle, the “Substance” star added, “For me, there was never a question. I show up because that’s what you do for the people you love.”
