Bruce Willis Relied On Earpiece To Get Lines To Film Final Film Roles

Tributes and well-wishes have been pouring in for Bruce Willis after he recently announced his retirement from acting because he was diagnosed with aphasia. Following the announcement, a Los Angeles Times story was released detailing the accounts of several cast and crew members Willis had worked with over the past couple of years. Many who were interviewed recalled feeling concern for the actor’s mental state and noted that his team was handling him extensively on set.

According to the report, Willis shot 22 films, most of which are or will be direct-to-video releases, over four years. Mike Burns, the director of one of these films, Out Of Death, said that he was asked to shorten Willis’ lines in the script and that they filmed all of the actor’s scenes in one day. Burns said that once he met Willis on set, it was apparent that the actor had a reduced capacity for memorization and said the day of filming was “exceedingly difficult.”

One of the most alarming alleged incidents related to Willis happened on the set of Hard Kill. Willis, who was acting alongside Vanderpump Rules star LaLa Kent, was supposed to deliver a line that would instruct Kent to duck before shooting his prop gun. Instead, Willis reportedly fired the gun before saying his line in two takes back-to-back, before Kent could duck. The armorer for Hard Kill and founder of the company that produced it, Randall Emmett, have denied that this incident took place.

A crew member who worked with Willis on the upcoming low-budget film White Elephant said, “Someone would give him a line and he didn’t understand what it meant. He was just being puppeted.” The actor was usually accompanied by his assistant and handler Stephen J. Eads, who was also apparently receiving producer credits and heavy payouts for his on-set duties, which some are calling into question.

They also reportedly had an actor on the payroll who was Willis’ full-time “earwig,” a slang term for someone who reads an actor’s lines through an earpiece to help them while shooting. Adam Huel Potter was allegedly guaranteed a small onscreen part in every movie and paid thousands of dollars a week to assist Willis with lines while filming these parts.