Moonlighting

Gays over 55 will know.

Who?

She was on Graham Norton 20 years ago with Cilla Black and she managed to outcunt Cilla.

She was very difficult on Moonlighting (and Cybill), but writer/producer Glenn Gordon Caron was worse. He was notorious for not completing scripts on time. The reason so many scenes on the show are set in the car is so the script could be taped to the dashboard for Cybill and Bruce to use, since they had no time to memorize it.

It was just a chaotic set from head to toe. It was easy to blame the woman but there was plenty of blame to go around. To his credit, Willis would later admit that most of the blame was his.

She was awful from the start. Ask Polly Platt.

I remember an old Conie Chung interview where Connie told Cybill that everyone she went to high school with in Memphis told Connie that Cybill was a bitch, I think it's on Youtube.

she may have been a cunt, but she sure was beautiful.

R7 in a WASP kinda way.

She was pissed because Bruce stole her show

Jealousy is a terrible thing

R10 And so are you from the neck up, dearie. Do those Polish genes include a few grandmothers who had congress with a mailbox?

I rest my case 🙄

I’m watching the pilot on TV right now.

Man, Bruce Willis’ acting is amateurish. He’s handsome and charismatic but I assume he improve drastically over following seasons because I can’t believe how bad he is.

It also features Crater Face from Grease as a punk.

Who?

Cybill and Bruce were exactly like their characters- she was a pain in the ass, he was full of himself. Add in what R3 said about late scripts…and eureka! a great show.

But like Murphy Brown, Sisters, and China Beach, it hasn't seen a rerun on the air in 30 years.

That’s probably because of rights to the music used for the Moonlighting, R16, not because of the popularity or quality. Copyright issues. Also, there aren’t enough episodes in the series for mass syndication.

R17 Al Jarreau plays hardball, doesn't he?

Read the behind the scenes book. She never warmed to playing Maddie Hayes. In fact she seemed to resent it. Though to be fair the crew blames her pregnancy for the shows demise and not Glenn who was so far behind schedule on everything.

Glenn comes off as insufferable. No show was ever completed early in the first three seasons and they wouldn’t be finished editing until hours before air. He tosses it off as making brilliant groundbreaking tv but it must have been impossible dealing with that kind of schedule and pressure.

WHAT BOOK?

[quote]R19 Glenn comes off as insufferable.

As per usual.

If I remember correctly, there’s an episode of the show that was given to ABC to feed to the stations minutes before it was to air.

There are an episode where David says he solved the murder “during the commercial”-Caron ran out of time to add a scene showing Maddie and David solving the crime: There was another episode that was turned in late and ran short, so they had David and Maddie answering viewer questions at the start of the episode.

It’s amazing the network never yanked Caron from the show.

Some episodes were brilliant. The one of "The Taming of the Shrew." The one with "The Consummation" to "Be My Baby."

The first season episode with the woman in the black veil is fantastic. But I must have seen it one hundred times as I always chanced upon it in the Lifetime reruns.

The show was firing on all cylinders in Season Two. Everybody seemed to be watching. It made the cover of Newsweek at the start of Season 3 and then… it massively flamed out midway through the season.

R25 endless reruns. I believe only 12 or 13 episodes were produced that season, at a time when network shows were doing 24 to 25.

The book is called Moonlighting an inside story. It’s on Amazon. Everyone with the exception of Bruce is interviewed for it.

Moonlighting is streaming on Hulu. Has been since late 2023.

Started streaming on Amazon Prime in January 2025.

Moonlighting (all 5 seasons) is streaming on Tubi. I've watched the first few episodes - Cybill's hair gets into the room before she does and Bruce is constantly pursing his lips. She was quite pretty and he was cute in a bad boy kinda way.

They’ve taken all but season 1 off Hulu and Prime

The late feeds and uneven airtimes really pissed off affiliates, which used to have more pull with the network. The constant reruns just pissed everyone off.

It was fun and fresh in its first couple of seasons but wow, what a flame-out. ABC had other shows that did well but were less problematic and the powers that be started turning their attention to them for promotions, etc.

It was no L.A. Law

Susan Dey has commented at r31 !

Cybill was the basis of Sharon Stones character in Irreconcilable Differences, also Annette Benings character in American Beauty and Catherine O’Hara’s character on Six Feet Under.

Cybill was also the basis for the character of Michael Myers in Halloween

I've never seen "Moonlighting" as a re-run on Lifetime or any other channel. I would have recorded them instead of buying the DVD series!

R28, Yes! I didn't find the lip-pursing annoying then (I adored "David"), but when I noticed that that was Bruce's entire means of expressing a thought, I couldn't watch any of his subsequent movies (with the exception of "The Jackal," and that was only because of the story and Richard Gere)!

Son of a gun, r28! It IS on Tubi! All 5 seasons! Woo-hoo! Thank you!

S3, E7: "Atomic Shakespeare". Iambic pentameter!

S3, E14: "I Am Curious...Maddie". "Be My Baby"!

Everybody on her sitcom trashed her too. I’ve never heard specifics as to what made her do terrible.

*so terrible

Shepherd is a survivor who didn’t give up. And for someone who’s got more of a screen presence than an actual measurable talent, she’s been in a number of classics.

If Hollywood didn’t have beautiful, troubling people like her it wouldn’t be a very exciting place.

A few years ago I listened to a lot of podcasts, and one favorite was 'You Must Remember This', which had a set of episodes devoted to Polly Platt. It was fascinating.

She had a certain something, but was apparently dreadful to work with, no matter the show or movie.

But hey, read her book - it's free. She'll tell you that everything was everyone else's fault......anyone else but her fault, of course.

Are Moonlighting and Cybill worth watching?

I love old shows and I've never seen these two.

R42 Moonlighting had something special in its first few seasons but leapt off the rails, on fire, somersaults in the air, at some point after or during season two when Cybill took a maternity leave and she and Bruce fell out.

Cybill has a sort of AbFab charm early on......and Baranski is the main reason to watch. (Which is why Cybill's inner cunt once again emerged and made everyone's life a living hell.)

In both cases, Cybill started out as a star, but quickly realized that neither fans nor the camera love her. She's forever doomed to be second-banana.

Bruce Willis stole her career and became THE action star of the 80s. Christine B. waltzed onto her first real sitcom and became an overnight Emmys sensation.

In recent years, Christine has been very diplomatic in discussing the show and even wished Cybill well in one interview.

Though I’m sure going through The Good Wife with uber cunt Julianna Marguiles and watching Julianna do even worse shit to Archie Panjabi than Cybill ever did to her probably put things in perspective.

YES YES YES, R42!

Cybill seems like a huge pain in the ass to work with but the Moonlighting set sounds like it was nightmare of misogyny and unprofessionalism. Creator Glenn Gordon Caron was way too impressed with himself and Willis let his instant fame go to his head so Cybill has hardly the only PITA on the show. It worked for awhile but was unsustainable.

^^ **Cybill was hardly the only PITA

Caron did an interview with the Television Academy that has a lot of interesting segments about Moonlighting

[quote] Susan Dey has commented at [R31] !

Of course that's not me.

I refuse all comment.

If you ever want to see what Cybill is really like, I recommend reading her memoir, "Cybill Disobedience." Her petty, jealous, grotesquely insecure personality fairly leaps off the page.

Cybill had Glen fired before season 5. She told the network it is either Glen or me. Anyway in an interview a few months ago Cybill claims that she didn't remember that Glen wasn't there and had no idea he was fired. Does she also have dementia?

[quote] Was Cybill Shepherd really that difficult to work with?

Yes

Another great episode: "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice"

Alan Ball's Television Academy interviews (I think?) included a statement saying he'd rather starve than ever work with or for Brett Butler or Cybill ever again.

R55, Southern woman can be difficult.

I don't know if someone has already mentioned this but Catherine O'Hara's Six Feet Under character is based off of Alan Ball's experience with Cybill.

R55 Peter Krause said he didn’t fear hell because he worked on Cybill.

R42 - Moonlighting is worth watching - if only to watch Cybill flounce around in flashy outfits with hair so big it required its own dressing room.

Cybill (the show) can be fun at times but she and Maryann are always dragging on men which is annoying. Of course Peter Krause plays her son in law and Wendy Malick has a guest spot as the wacky girlfriend of Cybill's x-husband Ira. Of course Cybill's hair wasn't nearly as big as it was on Moonlighting.

Poor polly

I don't think that blonde WASP appeal that she had would be appreciated if she were new to Hollywood in 2025.

Said no-one ever ^^^^.

Alan Ball never shuts up about how evil and mindless Cybill was. And Brett Butler, but at least Brett could blame it on the hooch.

Alan witnessed his own sister's violent death when he was 13, and it clearly fucked him up. But three years working for the Pork Pie of Memphis has scarred him worse.

He claims she took creative control of the show and turned it into her own personal blog, rather than a work of fiction. She'd get a bad haircut and then insist on writing an entire episode about the same exact thing happening to the character.

Wasn’t he a demented druggie at the time?

[quote] I don't think that blonde WASP appeal that she had would be appreciated if she were new to Hollywood in 2025.

Say what?

Not to mention......"BARBIE"!!

Ny all accounts dhecwas a notoriously difficult cunt. Seemed to believe her looks and TV success made her a goddess.

What’s Bruce Willis’ excuse?

Did Bruce Willis type r67?

R69 hWat?

I liked “Cybill”. It was funny whenever Morgan Fairchild was on as her rival Andrea.

There is absolutely NO comparison in quality between Moonlighting and the Cybill sitcom. Moonlighting is so much better, a landmark great show. Too bad it got fucked up so fast.

R72 Any show with a laugh track is already on life support.

I also thought the Cybil series was great. At least the first three seasons were. There may have been lots of backstage turmoil, but what made it on camera was funny, clever and sometimes brilliant. I very much enjoyed it.

I’ve told this story before on DL—I used to be a journalist and interviewed Sharon Glass in the early 2000s for a magazine piece. She was great! So dishy!

She told me this story: Gless was up for a role in a Bogdonovich movie. She didn’t get it because Cybil talked Peter out of it—said Gless was a “cunt.” Peter told her that’s why he didn’t hire her.

[quote]Peter Krause said he didn’t fear hell because he worked on Cybill.

Alan Rosenberg said it was the most miserable job of his entire career. I don't know if Tom Wopat ever has discussed it.

Bitter Joan Rivers (who had to spend millions on plastic surgery just to look halfway decent) always called Cybill Shepherd the president of the Fucking Lucky Club.

Which is kind of true… but it’s not her fault she just happened to be the American ideal of beauty. She ran with it - so what? Wouldn’t you?

I loved Joan Rivers, but also knew she was a lying jealous fucking bitch. Best friends with Streisand too, NOT.

I loved Cybill's look the first couple seasons. She was gorgeous. Then at some point they started doing her hair super big and curly which wasn't flattering. And her pregnancy really took a toll on her looks. She gained weight and looked tired and run-down. After that it was like they gave up trying to make her look glamorous

then love won't hurt anymore.

Well she dud have twins. That will take a toll on anybody.

The first three seasons of Moonlighting were superb.

Cybill can deliver other people's comedy lines.

But she was better as the target of a roast than the wielder of one.

Her memoir makes clear she's what therapists call a "splitter": everyone is either entirely on her side, or else is her sworn enemy. There can be no in-between for her.

She likely has a Cluster B personality disorder.

R79, Irish folks can age rapidly if they’re not careful. Cybil was gorgeous and perfectly cast in The Heartbreak Kid (and looked a lot like Maureen McCormick at the time).

When Moonlighting started, she was still beautiful, but her spark was starting to fade despite only being in her early thirties. I also think she was better suited to the fashion and hair styles of the ‘70s than the fussier looks of the ‘80s.

Remember Shepherd being the spokesperson for red meat and she partially tanked it when she publicly said she didn’t eat meat?

And James Garner was the male spokesperson at the same time and he went through bypass surgery so the campaign died.

Bogdonovich sounds like an idiot, r75. He shouldn't have made a hiring decision based on Cybill's personal opinion of someone. What a limpdick pussy.

R84, I was thinking the same and have many friends that have either worked for Cybilll or are curently close friends with Cybill. I can tell you that she was a classic borderline overlapping with narcissism most of her adult life but with constant therapy she has worked threw a lot of that BUT I think she now has some cognitive issues.

Cybill has aged like an older German woman.

So was Bruce Willis. Not Cybill’s fan, but Bruce is just as much to blame for tensions on the set of their show.

R85 - “ looked like Maureen McCormick at the time”

No.

R85 Not at all.

“Ricky Nelson? He’s white!”.

[quote]Another great episode: "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice"

The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice (Maddie Hayes version):

R94 That was brilliant.

R85 Cybill said she was sometimes mistaken for McCormick and nearly every other blonde actress when her career was slow in the late '70s and early '80s.

And here's the David Addison version.

R85 - Bull.

Cybill was always beautiful, but outside of the 1970s, she tended to look puffy and a tad porcine in the face (it’s the eyes and nose. James Spader was similar).

cybill was the quintessential all-american beauty. at the peak of her beauty, no one else came close.

fuck, i’d be a bitch too.

[quote] r100 cybill was the quintessential all-american beauty. at the peak of her beauty, no one else came close.

Her persona was a little entitled and surly (kind of like Lauren Bacall's in another era) but she was the type of blonde that all straight American men look at and go, "Wowza!" That made her perfect for playing unobtainable bitches.

Some like to deny Shepherd had impact, but she was in key films for Scorsese, Bogdonavich, and Neil Simon, had two hit TV shows, plus the successful Martha Stewart TV movies. Combined with a legendary modelling career, that's an awful lot. What else can you expect of her?

Yeah, Daisy Miller was a hot one.

Well, Shepherd looked divine as usual, anyway

Bogdonavich’s projects without production designer Polly Platt (who was really a producer, as well) did certainly suffer, though. He was never as good without her.

Both of them: terrible voices

Here's the problem with Cybill Shepherd. She didn't appreciated her own talent, which was being the "straight man." She's not funny. She wanted to be Lucy instead of Ethel. I think here's where we can appreciate Mary Tyler Moore. She could be funny, as she was on the Dick Van Dyke show, or she was a great "straight man," as she most often was on her won show.

I think Shepherd was good casting for Daisy Miller. But she should have done it a decade later. She was too untrained and wet behind the ears at the time to really understand the character. Had she done it during the mid 80's after coming back from her fallout, she would have been better.

I give her credit for busting her ass off for several years touring around the country in road show productions because she wanted to be a better actress. And she came back to Hollywood stronger. She gave some truly great performances in Moonlighting and on The Yellow Rose.

Cybill was gorgeous.

R105 is correct. She reacted to the craziness around her in Moonlighting.

AND I’M CYBILL SHEPHERD!!!!?

R22 yes I recall there being promos on for a new episode, an ad in TV Guide and everything. Then you tune in and... a rerun.

There was one where they filmed an intro to a rerun apologizing for there being no new episode.

Worst of all were the couple of episodes with no Cybil or Bruce at all that featured Mr. Viola and Miss Depesto.

I remember that Bruce Willis hated the way she wore her hair. I agreed with him, it was so unnatural looking and probably had two cans of Aqua Net sprayed on it.

When they put those two together romantically it ruined the show. Same goes for Bones.

R112 Bones had 8 or 9 seasons with them together.

Hollywood thinks that's what the audience wants. No, not always.

[quote]When they put those two together romantically it ruined the show.

Putting them together didn't kill the show, it was what followed. Cybill's pregnancy meant she couldn't come back in the fall to work and Bruce was filming Die Hard during that summer. They had no choice but to create two separate storylines, and film Cybill's over the summer and Bruce's in the fall. And because they were so behind schedule, Glenn had about a week to come up with an idea.

Despite that, ratings were strong for the time they were apart. The Walter Bishop storyline is when ratings started to plummet. Then Glenn got fired and it was pretty much a wrap.

[quote]R111 I remember that Bruce Willis hated the way she wore her hair. I agreed with him, it was so unnatural looking and probably had two cans of Aqua Net sprayed on it.

That’s because the original way she wore her hair took too long - it was loose, flowing waves which she would bend over to brush out between takes, then a stylist would push them up and into place. It’s a sexy look but it doesn’t last long.

The producers made her cut the hair shorter and spray it in place, so it would last throughout the day.

No one liked it.

The longer hair suited her better.

Yeah after they got together ("Good" "Good" "Fine!" "Fine!" "Bitch" slap :"Bastard" boom boom boom chick) it was followed by several episodes with no Cybil Shephard at all, or very limited appearances. It was EXCRUCIATING. Then she got pregnant, and we met her "baby" in the womb, only for it to promptly miscarry.

It limped along one more season before being put out of its (and our) misery.

Bruce had much bigger celluloid fish to fry.

She looked like an outdated Breck girl.

Agreed R87 I still cant believe Peter Bogdonavitch happened.

R120 That is what her character was.

Never watched it and thanks to the two video examples I wont waste my time. DL always there for me.

It always happens when shows get successful they want more money more lines more perks and yes, I’m talking to you friends cast.

[quote]r124 It always happens when shows get successful, they want more money, more lines, more perks

And why shouldn't they get that, if they're raking in fortunes for others?

R108 - yes, she was great in the first couple of seasons when she was "reacting." Bruce Willis was getting more attention for his comedic takes, and she started demanding that she get to be the funny one. That's when it started to go downhill.

The same thing happened on her show, "Cybill." Christine Baranski started getting all the attention and the laughs, and then she started demanding the writers make her funny. And she's not. Ruined that show too.

When did she demand to be the funny one in Moonlighting?

The first three seasons were great. The problems came with Bruce’s movie career and the aftermath of Cybill’s pregnancy.

It was 40 years ago. Season 3, IIRC.

I recall an episode where David wound up.on a chain gang. Maddie was nowhere to be found. It was so bad. I think the producers had them bang because they knew she was going to miss episodes and the show would be crap for several months.

Then she married Dennis Dugan. Bad bad bad.

Cybill WAS a Breck Girl.

They always do shit like that. When 99 married Maxwell Smart it was stupid and cringy, and ruined Get Smart. Also, when these TV characters have children, it’s ALWAYS twins or triplets. Don’t get the idea behind that.

What about Jeannie marrying Major Nelson?

R132, to me that felt like a plan for their last season.

I think Cybil is now sick and has the early stages of dementia.

Why do you say dementia?

[quote][R132], to me that felt like a plan for their last season.

I Dream of Jeannie was running out of steam by its final season. So, at least the marriage gave them something to create some stories around. Plus once they were married Jeannie could interact with Dr. Bellows and Mrs. Bellows and others as NASA.

Of course, the marriage also meant a stupid, unnecessary redesign of Tony's wonderful house, a house i would have loved to have lived in.

R134 I hate to hear that if true.

She may have been a pain in the ass but Moonlighting was so fun to watch. Seeing Bruce decline is heartbreaking as well.

She can’t be that bad. She’s performing her nightclub act in Catalina this week.

Oh please, Cybill does not have dementia

Cybill will live to dance on everybody’s grave!

[quote]Putting them together didn't kill the show, it was what followed. Cybill's pregnancy meant she couldn't come back in the fall to work and Bruce was filming Die Hard during that summer. They had no choice but to create two separate storylines, and film Cybill's over the summer and Bruce's in the fall.

Not quite: it was even worse than that! "Die Hard" filming was delayed for some reason, and didn't start until November of that year – a month into Cybill's maternity leave. Filming scenes in advance for someone going on maternity leave isn't that unusual, but having a hit show with BOTH leads having massive schedule conflicts was enough all by itself to kill it – even without Cybill or Bruce being a diva, or Glenn being chronically late with the scripts.

For some reason I know a lot of "Die Hard" trivia, including the unusual aspects of its shoot. At least until network TV began dying out, actors who got cast in films generally always booked them for their show's summer hiatus. Fox somehow ended up without a summer tentpole in 1988, so they frantically rushed out "Die Hard" in an all-location, all-nighttime shoot at "Nakatomi Plaza," a.k.a. the new Fox HQ in Century City. In addition to the oddness of being shot at the actual tower, it was a *winter* shoot (Nov-Mar), and it overlapped with most of Cybill's maternity leave.

You're right that they shot Cybill's scenes first and Bruce's second, but them *both* being so busy is why they had to resort to having a few episodes without either of them, focused on Mr. Viola and Miss DiPesto. Still, these VERY unique circumstances are how one of the most brilliant, and truly novel, shows in network television history all but collapsed after the end of the third season.

Even with everyone "back," S5 was a disaster. "Die Hard" was a massive hit, thus inflating Bruce's ego, deflating Cybill's, and worsening an already-bad on-set tenor. In hindsight, I get that it was simultaneously perfect and way too far ahead of its time. In today's prestige TV world, scripts like the ones on S1-S3 – along with more than sufficient shooting time for scripts 2x as long as the standard for network dramas, and with extremely elaborate special sequences – it would fair better, but OTOH there REALLY aren't many (any?) onscreen pairings in recent times that were *that* much of a spark (even if they hated each other behind the scenes).

Moonlighting would work well in the 13 episode / season format.

I think Katherine Heigl would make a convincing Maddie Hayes. I can’t think of a good David.

[quote]I think Katherine Heigl would make a convincing Maddie Hayes

Please no. Haven't we had sufficient?

No, r142. There have been plenty of male/female cop/detective shows, so just come up with a new one, not a re-imagined BT, DT one.

R130 That’s Kim Basinger and her mother in that Breck illustration. Cybill gets far, far more DL attention than crazy Kim. That’s a discrepancy that should be remedied.

The whole show was a fucking ripoff of a far better show airing on another network.

Strong words from a fucking one-hit nepo baby. Some of us had to do it the old-fashioned way and fuck our directors to get ahead

Bruce Willis was amusing.

I loved when other TV shows started making digs at Moonlighting’s erratic schedule. When Anne-Marie Martin’s character was knocked unconscious on Sledge Hammer! the attacker said she passed out because a new Moonlighting episode was airing that night.

R145, Yes. Try clicking on the link to read the article.

Don’t forget the golden Girls joke about watching a special episode of Moonlighting because it’s only been re-ran twice.

Cybill come from six generations of slave owners from the Memphis area. No wonder she is so demanding. She's a CRACKER-CRACK that wip.