Everybody has to start somewhere, and for Bruce Willis his start came in the mid-’80s comedy “Moonlighting.” You would think that someone with as much charisma as Willis would have had no problem getting the lead role of wise guy detective David Addison (I mean, have you seen “Die Hard?”) But believe it or not, landing this role would take a massive act of defiance from series creator Glenn Gordon Caron.
According to Caron, they had auditioned around 1,100 actors for the part and at one point he even considered famous L.A. disc jockey Rick Dees, but he wasn’t interested. That’s when Caron said inspiration walked through the door. “The next day we did an audition, 10, 11 guys and one of these guys came in and I went ‘That’s him!’ And it was Bruce Willis,” Caron told the Television Academy in 2007. “His head was shaved, he had all these earrings, he was wearing combat fatigues.”
Unfortunately, Caron seemed to be the only one that saw Willis’ potential. “We brought him to the [ABC] network. We brought him 11 times,” Caron said in the same interview. “And they turned him down 11 times.” But Caron refused to give in. In the book “Bruce Willis: The Unauthorized Biography,” according to author John Parker, Caron gave ABC an ultimatum: cast Willis as the lead, or he would pull out and take his script somewhere else. The gambit worked and Willis had his big break.
Caron knew he had something special with Willis, even if others didn’t
While it may seem like an obvious casting decision in hindsight, giving Bruce Willis the leading role in “Moonlighting” alongside Cybill Shepherd was harder than anyone could have expected. Creator Glenn Gordon Caron told the Television Academy that even after screen tests ABC still didn’t see what he saw. “Every time I would take him in they would say the same thing, they would say ‘You know what, he’s not a leading man,'” Caron said. “No one’s going to believe him next to Cybill Shepherd.”
But Caron saw something special. “My experience was every time I walked him down the hall he was such … a sexual beast,” Caron said. “Finally [ABC executive] Ann Daniel… said ‘look I don’t know if he’s a TV star or not, I don’t know he’s a leading man or not, but he sure looks like a dangerous f*** to me.'”
Once the show hit the air, there became little doubt as to whether or not Willis was right for the role. It would become one of his defining roles, especially on the television side. He would go on to win an Emmy and Golden Globe for his performance, and the show ran for five seasons before being cancelled due in part to Willis’ booming movie career, among other reasons.
