The Show That Came Along Once In A Blue Moon

The Series That Launched Bruce and Cybill

From 1985 to 1989, the world watched in delight as Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis sparred, flirted and occasionally solved mysteries in the hit series Moonlighting.

The sly, irreverent show was considered groundbreaking at the time and is widely credited with creating a whole new genre – the dramedy.

For Cybill (69), the series represented a return to Hollywood glory. Already a successful model, her acting career had started with a hiss and a roar with The Last Picture Show and Taxi Driver, but subsequent films flopped and she was described by one Hollywood writer as “a no-talent dame with nice boobs and a toothpaste smile and all the star quality of a dead hamster”.

However, when Moonlighting writer and producer Glenn Caron (65) was halfway through his first script, he realised he was writing the role of bankrupt ex-model Maddie for Cybill. The network agreed and then the search was on for wisecracking gumshoe David Addison, who runs the Blue Moon Detective Agency.

Glenn trawled through more than 2000 actors before settling on virtual unknown Bruce (64).

“When we cast him, the only thing he’d done was the play Fool for Love, which was off Broadway, and I think he was an extra in a Frank Sinatra film,” Glenn recalls. “I always feel like if it had not been me, someone else would have come along and offered him a part, and people would have seen how brilliant he was.”