Bruce Willis Moonlighting was the actor’s first role.
Bruce Willis Moonlighting: Overview of Show
Moonlighting is an American comedy drama television series that aired on ABC from March 3, 1985, to May 14, 1989. The network aired a total of 67 episodes. Starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis as private detectives, Allyce Beasley as their quirky receptionist, and Curtis Armstrong as a temp worker (and later junior detective), the show was a mixture of drama, comedy, mystery, and romance, and was considered to be one of the first successful and influential examples of comedy drama, or “dramedy”, emerging as a distinct television genre.
The show’s theme song was co-written and performed by jazz singer Al Jarreau and became a hit. The show is also credited with making Willis a star and relaunching Shepherd’s career after a string of lackluster projects. In 1997, the episode “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” was ranked number 34 on TV Guide’s 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. In 2007, the series was listed as one of Time magazine’s “100 Best TV Shows of All-Time”. The relationship between the characters David and Maddie was included in TV Guide’s list of the best TV couples of all time.
Bruce Willis Moonlighting: Plot
The series revolved around cases investigated by the Blue Moon Detective Agency and its two partners, Madolyn “Maddie” Hayes (Shepherd) and David Addison (Willis). The show, with a mix of mystery, sharp dialogue, and sexual tension between its leads, introduced Willis to the world and brought Shepherd back into the spotlight after a nearly decade-long absence. The characters were introduced in a two-hour pilot episode.
The show’s storyline begins with the reversal of fortune of Maddie Hayes, a former model who finds herself bankrupt after her accountant embezzles all her liquid assets. She is left saddled with several failing businesses formerly maintained as tax writeoffs, one of which is the City of Angels Detective Agency, helmed by the carefree David Addison.
Between the pilot and the first one-hour episode, David persuades Maddie to keep the business and run it as a partnership. The agency is renamed Blue Moon Investigations because Maddie was most famous for being the spokesmodel for the Blue Moon Shampoo Company. In many episodes, she was recognized as “the Blue Moon shampoo girl”, if not by name.
In his audio commentary for the Season 3 DVD, creator Glenn Gordon Caron says that the inspiration for the series was a production of The Taming of the Shrew he saw in Central Park starring Meryl Streep and Raúl Julia. The show parodied the play in the Season 3 episode “Atomic Shakespeare”
Bruce Willis Moonlighting: Cast
Cybill Shepherd as Madolyn “Maddie” Hayes, a chic, smart former high-fashion model. Left bankrupt when her accountant embezzles her money, she is forced to make a living by running the detective agency she owns as a tax writeoff. Using her celebrity as a former model, she brings in clients and tries to bring some order to a business previously run without any discipline.
By the time he had written 50 pages for the pilot to the show, Caron says he realized he was writing the part for Shepherd. After reading the script, she immediately realized this was a part she wanted to do and, during her first meeting with Caron and producer Jay Daniel, remarked that it was reminiscent of a “Hawksian” comedy. The two had no idea what she was talking about, so she suggested they screen Twentieth Century, Bringing Up Baby, and His Girl Friday, three of her favorites, to see how the overlapping dialogue was handled. A week before shooting of the pilot began, Caron, Shepherd, and Willis watched Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday.
Bruce Willis Moonlighting as David Addison, a wisecracking detective running the City of Angels Detective Agency. Faced with the prospect of being put out of business, he convinces Maddie that they lost money only because they were supposed to and talks her into rebranding the agency and going into business with him as her partner.
Caron had to fight with ABC to put Willis in the lead role, having already signed Shepherd for the pilot and series. Caron claims he tested Willis about a third of the way through over 2,000 actors, knew “this was the guy” immediately, and had to fight through twice as many more acting tests and readings while arguing with ABC executives before receiving conditional authorization to cast Willis in the pilot. According to Caron, ABC did not feel that viewers would find any sexual tension between Shepherd and Willis believable.
Allyce Beasley as Agnes DiPesto, the agency’s extremely loyal and quirky receptionist who always answers the phone in rhyme. In season two, it is revealed that she lives at 6338 Hope Street. As problems arose with getting Willis and Shepherd on screen due to personal issues, the writers started to focus on the relationship between Agnes and fellow Blue Moon employee Herbert Viola. In the series finale, Agnes marries Herbert and berates Maddie and David for not being able to figure out their relationship as the entire set is dismantled and says, “if there’s a God in heaven, he’ll spin Herbert and me off in our own series.”
Curtis Armstrong as Herbert Viola, who started at Blue Moon as an employee from a temp agency. The producers brought Armstrong in based on his work in Revenge of the Nerds and Better Off Dead, hoping to expand the role of DiPesto by giving her a love interest, thereby taking some of the pressure off Willis and Shepherd. As Herbert begins to shine in his duties, he gets promoted to junior detective and marries Agnes in the series finale. Debuting in season three, he appeared in 36 of the series’ 67 episodes.
For More Information About Moonlighting – Follow the Link…
Moonlighting (TV Series 1985–1989) – IMDb
