Bruce Willis’ wife appeals to paparazzi not to follow, yell at him: ‘Just keep your space’
Bruce Willis (let) and wife Emma Heming Willis attend the premiere of “Motherless Brooklyn” during the 57th New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall on Oct. 11, 2019, in New York City. Image: AFP/Angela Weiss
Emma Heming Willis, the wife of American actor Bruce Willis who has been diagnosed with untreatable dementia, made a plea to paparazzi after he was followed and got yelled at while he was out having coffee with his friends.
Emma addressed the “photographers and video people” after seeing headlines about Bruce’s day out in California to have a coffee, in a video on her Instagram page last Sunday, March 5.
“You know if you are someone who is looking after someone with dementia, you know how difficult and stressful it can be to get someone out into the world and just to navigate them safely, even just to get a cup of coffee,” she said.
“In the spirit of raising awareness around dementia—it’s clear that there’s still a lot of education that needs to be put forth—so this one is going out to the photographers and the video people that are trying to get those ‘exclusives’ of my husband out and about: just keep your space,” she continued.
Emma noted that she’s aware these people were just doing their jobs, but she appealed to them to give Bruce as well as their family space and allow them to go places safely.
“For the video people, please don’t be yelling at my husband, asking him how he’s doing or whatever the woo-hooing and the yippee-ki-yay’s—just don’t do it,” she stated.
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Emma then lamented in a more recent post how those reporting about her plea to paparazzi are the same ones disseminating Bruce’s photos through their platforms. Despite this, she clarified that she is not going “head to head” with the media.
“And just to be clear, I am not trying to go head to head with the media because I will lose. I’m very clear about that,” she stressed. “But I just want my husband to be able to participate in his life to the fullest. That’s it.”
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Bruce’s retirement from acting was announced in March last year alongside his aphasia diagnosis. His family then made public last February that his condition had progressed into frontotemporal dementia (FTD), an umbrella term for disorders affecting the areas of the brain that deal with personality, behavior and language. /ra
