Copyright Parade
Emma Heming Willis is opening up about the heartbreaking first sign she realized something was wrong with her husband, Bruce Willis. In a new interview with NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas shared on Wednesday, October 29, the 47-year-old model reflected on the earliest symptom that hinted at the actor’s illness long before his diagnosis. “I think for me what I noticed was that his stutter started to come back,” she shared. “Bruce had a severe stutter when he was a child that he held onto, actually, his life, but was able to kind of get a handle on it, I think, in his adult years. Then I started seeing that it started coming back. Never in my wildest dreams would I think that was now becoming a symptom of FTD.” Bruce, 70, was diagnosed with aphasia in 2022, a condition that affects a person’s ability to communicate. The following year, his family revealed that his condition had progressed to frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a rare degenerative disorder that impacts speech, behavior, and cognition. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 After Vargas shared a shocking statistic about the health of caregivers — and how they often die before the person they’re caring for — Heming Willis revealed how she feels to be in the position. “Caregiving can be really harmful to your health. I didn’t know that, and I was grateful, yet alarmed, that his neurologist shared that with me, and that was a call for me to start taking care of myself,” she shared. “Not just for Bruce, but for our two young daughters.” Hemming Willis and Bruce share daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11. “I’ve always been very open and honest with them… I felt like it was important for them to understand what their dad was experiencing,” she shared in the interview about her daughters.
