Cybill Shepherd is thankful that her rocky relationships with Bruce Willis and Christine Baranski are in the rearview mirror.
While speaking to People in an interview published on Tuesday, October 14, Shepherd, 75, shared how relieved she was that her feud with Moonlighting costar Willis, 70, got squashed following his dementia diagnosis and announcement he would be stepping away from acting.
“Yes, I’m very grateful for that,” she told the outlet. “Yeah, it was time.”
Moonlighting aired from 1985 to 1989 and starred Willis as David Addison, a private detective who finds himself having to begrudgingly partner with Maddie Hayes, played by Shepherd, after he falls on unexpected hard times. The pair’s on-screen tension and bickering that drew viewers in, however, eventually seeped into the actors’ real-life dynamic.
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During a 1990 appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, Willis confessed that he never spent time with Shepherd outside of filming together, and poked fun at the fact Shepherd was seemingly “still talking” about their show even after it ended.
When host Arsenio Hall asked if Willis would consider reuniting with Shepherd for a film in the future, the Die Hard star shot down the idea.
“I don’t think so. Not right now, anyway. Listen, Moonlighting was a very good show for me, and I had a lot of fun doing it. It reached a point where it was no longer fun,” Willis confessed. “It also reached a point where we kind of ran out of things for these people to do.”
Willis also confirmed that he and Shepherd didn’t “get along” very well on set, explaining, “Fourteen-hour days, five days a week, and I was working 12 months a year … I have no hard feelings. I’m doing other things now.”
Shepherd addressed the feud herself in 2000, alleging that the sexual tension between Maddie and David on the series initially carried over off screen. She recalled once “passionately sucking face” with Willis on a sofa in the early days of Moonlighting’s run. However, when she allegedly approached Willis with a bottle of wine to see if they were “going to do something about this or what?” Willis shot her down.
“We never did finish what we started,” she confirmed to The Scottish Daily Record in 2000, before admitting she was thankful nothing romantic happened between them. “But once I got to know him I was glad I didn’t get involved. Bruce Willis is a jerk.”
However, more than decade later, Shepherd spoke about Willis again, shortly after his March 2022 aphasia diagnosis, this time telling Extra that she would “always love” her former costar.
While speaking to People on Tuesday, Shepherd also confirmed that her feud with Cybill castmate Baranski, 73, had also been buried. Shepherd starred on the ‘90s sitcom, which ran from 1995 to 1998, as the titular character who attempts to make her acting dreams come true. Baranski played her best friend Maryann.
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“We’re good now,” Shepherd told People of her current relationship with Baranksi. When asked how the two were able to get to a better place, she added, “Just a talk and be real open-hearted with each other.”
In Shepherd’s 2000 memoir, Cybill Disobedience, Shepherd wrote that she and Baranski didn’t get along due to Baranski being “unfriendly.” Baranski, meanwhile, told The Guardian in 2022 that there were in fact “issues’ on set, but she preferred “to take the higher ground and say, look, that show gave me so much.”
