Tallulah Willis has shared her candid thoughts about mother Demi Moore’s romance with Ashton Kutcher.
The 29-year-old reflected on growing up in the spotlight, as the daughter of former couple Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, during Monday’s episode of Fox’s celebrity reality show, Stars on Mars.
Willis, who currently lives in Idaho, said that throughout her childhood, she didn’t “fully understand” how famous her parents were. However, she said that she ultimately had a change in perspective during the early 2000s, when Moore first started dating Kutcher.
“It was, like, 2003, my mom had just started dating Ashton,” Willis said. “It was that moment. There was a lot going on, and I really went inside of myself.”
Willis proceeded to open up about how she struggled with her mother’s public romance, at the time.
“That did send me into, like, a total dumpster fire. It was really hard, and I’m still unpacking,” she continued.
However, she also acknowledged what she learned from this experience, adding: “I found the other side of that, which is like, I really love myself now. And I love my family.”
Moore and Kutcher got married in 2005, when Willis was about eight-years-old. In addition to Willis, the actor was a stepfather to Moore and Bruce’s two other children, Rumer, now 44, and Scout, now 31. Kutcher and Moore announced their split in 2011, before finalising their divorce in 2013.
Earlier this year, the Two and a Half Men star spoke candidly about his ex and recalled how she suffered from a miscarriage, shortly after they started dating. In her 2019 memoir, Inside Out, Moore first revealed that she suffered a miscarriage in 2003.
“Losing a kid that you think you’re going to have, and that close to thinking you’re going to have a kid, is really, really painful,” he told Esquire in January. “Everyone deals with that in different ways.”
During their relationship, Kutcher also told the publication that he “stayed home and took care of the kids” when Moore would go and work on a film.
“I was 26, bearing the responsibility of an eight-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 12-year-old,” he said, referring to Moore’s three daughters. “That’s how some teen parents must experience their twenties.”
He also confessed to feeling like he failed after his divorce from Moore, explaining: “Nothing makes you feel like a failure like divorce. Divorce feels like a wholesale f***king failure. You failed at marriage.”
Sill, the entrepreneur admitted that “for whatever reason, [he] had to have that experience.”
These days, Kutcher has been married to his former co-star, Mila Kunis, since 2015. They share two children: Wyatt Isabelle, eight, and Dimitri, six.
Moore has now blended families with her ex, Bruce Willis, who has two daughters, Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, eight, with wife Emma Heming Willis. In March, the two families issued a joint statement to announce that Bruce has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), one year after being diagnosed with aphasia.
Along with sharing her candid thoughts about her mother’s previous relationship, Tallulah Willis has also opened up about her bond with her father, amid his struggles with dementia. In an essay published by Vogue last month, she discussed how her relationship with her father has grown and strengthened, over the years. She also noted that she’s making the most of her time that she has with him.
“I can bring him an energy that’s bright and sunny, no matter where I’ve been. In the past I was so afraid of being destroyed by sadness, but finally I feel that I can show up and be relied upon,” Tallulah wrote. “I can savor that time, hold my dad’s hand, and feel that it’s wonderful. I know that trials are looming, that this is the beginning of grief, but that whole thing about loving yourself before you can love somebody else—it’s real.”
