Demi Moore has reflected on her role as Bruce Willis’s ex-wife amid his dementia diagnosis.
On Tuesday’s episode of The Oprah Podcast, Oprah Winfrey spoke with Willis’s current wife, Emma Heming Willis, 47, about her new book, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Hope and Purpose on the Caregiving Path, which chronicles her experience caring for the actor following his frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis.
During the conversation, Winfrey played a separate interview with Moore — who shares three daughters with Willis — in which the Substance star expressed admiration for Heming Willis. “I have so much compassion for Emma,” Moore said. “Being the ex-wife, even though our family is very connected, is an interesting position.”
“There is no road map for how to deal with this,” the Ghost actor continued. “So much fell on Emma to really figure this whole thing out. And the most beautiful thing, and she talks about this in the book, was recognizing the importance for caregivers that they have to take care of themselves. ... I really think she's done a masterful job.”
Winfrey also asked Moore how she was coping with watching Willis “suffer from this disease.”
“It’s difficult,” Moore replied. “It’s hard to see somebody who was so vibrant and strong and so directed shift into this other parts of themself.”
“But my particular perspective is, one, I really always say it’s so important just to meet them where they’re at. Don't have an expectation of them needing to be who they were or who you want them to be. And when you do that I find that there is an incredible sweetness and something that’s soft and tender and loving. Perhaps it is more playful and childlike in a certain sense because of how much more caretaking they need.”
Heming Willis’s appearance on Winfrey’s podcast comes after she hit back at trolls on Instagram who criticized her decision to move the actor out of their family home as his condition progresses.
“Too often, caregivers are judged quickly and unfairly by those who haven’t lived this journey or stood on the front lines of it,” she said at the time.
While describing the choice to relocate her husband as the “hardest decision,” Heming Willis added that she expected judgment and criticism, but shared the update as “it creates connection and validation for those actually navigating the realities of caregiving every day.”
“That’s who I share for and so I can build a deeper connection with a community that understands this journey,” she said.
Willis is now living with a full-time care team in a one-story home as his needs become more complex and intensive.
