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Demi Moore shares ‘difficult’ experience of watching dementia change Bruce Willis

PEOPLE
Demi Moore

Demi Moore is opening up on the “difficult” experience of seeing the changes in ex-husband Bruce Willis amid his ongoing battle with frontotemporal dementia.

The Oscar-nominated “Substance” star, 62, who shares three adult daughters with 70-year-old Willis, told “The Oprah Podcast” that “it’s hard to see somebody who was so, you know, vibrant and strong and so directed, shift into this other part of themself.”

The actors’ blended family, including the “Sixth Sense” star’s wife, Emma Heming Willis — with whom he shares young daughters Mabel and Evelyn — announced in early 2022 that he would retire from acting due to suffering from aphasia, which affects the ability to communicate.

Just over a year later, they announced that Willis had frontotemporal dementia (FTD), for which there are no current treatments.

“I always say, it’s so important just to meet them where they’re at. Don’t have an expectation of them needing to be who they were or who you want them to be,” Moore said. “When you do that, I find that there is an incredible sweetness and something that’s soft and tender and loving. And perhaps it is more … playful and childlike, in a certain sense, because of how much more caretaking they need.”

The actress said she makes a point of “showing up and … just being present,” because projecting where the situation is headed or replaying “what you’ve lost” only creates “anxiety and grief.”

“When you stay present, there is so much — and there’s still so much of him there,” she added. “It may not always be verbal, but it is beautiful, given the givens.”

Heming Willis, 47 — whose caregiving book, “The Unexpected Journey,” is out Sept. 9 — revealed last week that despite the changes she’s witnessed in her husband, she still catches glimpses of the man she fell in love with, particularly his “hearty laugh” and “twinkle in his eye.”

While she said Willis is in “great overall health,” all things considered, she told ABC News that the “Die Hard” star has been living in a second home near the family, which is “safer for him and his caregivers to navigate.”

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Cardi B

Cardi B wins case filed by security guard who claimed rapper assaulted her

LOS ANGELES — A jury gave Cardi B a quick and absolute victory Tuesday at a trial in the lawsuit of a security guard who alleged the rap star assaulted her at a doctor's office during her then-secret first pregnancy.

The jury of six men and six women at a small courthouse in Alhambra, California deliberated for only about an hour before finding Cardi not liable in the lawsuit brought by Emani Ellis, who alleged Cardi cut her face with a fingernail and spat on her in the hallway of a Beverly Hills obstetrician in February of 2018.

Only nine of the 12 jurors were required for a verdict in the civil case, but their decision in Cardi's favor was unanimous.

“The next person who tries to do a frivolous lawsuit against me, I’m going to counter-sue, and I’m gonna make you pay, because this is not OK,” she said outside the courthouse, where she posed for pictures with fans. “I am not that celeb that you sue, and you think is going to settle. I’m not gonna settle. Especially when I’m super completely innocent.”

She said she had to miss her kids' first day of school because of the trial, and said her forehead was “raw, raw, raw” after all the elaborate wig changes during the trial that at one point even left her lawyer confused over which was her real hair. (None of them were, she said with a laugh.)

During a lunchbreak before the verdict Tuesday in a moment captured by cameras from several media outlets, she threw a marker she was using for autographs at a man who shouted questions to her about whether she was currently pregnant, and who the father is. She called the questions disrespectful.

In two days of testimony last week that were livestreamed, widely viewed and full of viral moments, the hip-hop star testified she feared that Ellis was going to make her pregnancy public. She acknowledged that the two argued, but said it never got physical.

“I will say it on my deathbed. I did not touch that woman,” she said after her win. “I did not touch that girl. I didn’t lay my hands on that girl.”

Ron Rosen Janfaza, the lawyer for the plaintiff Ellis, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. He said outside court that they plan to appeal the decision.

After several days off, the trial resumed with closing arguments earlier Tuesday.

Janfaza told jurors that Ellis, who had hoped to work in law enforcement or something similar, “lost her future” along with her job over the incident.

“Whether it’s the FBI, police, attorney, whatever she wanted to do, this incident cut it off,” he said in his closing argument. “No more, because of the trauma she sustained.”

He also called out the profanity Cardi freely used during her testimony, suggesting she had scorn for the proceedings.

“The defendant came here, used all of this foul language,” he told the jurors. “This is a court of law, you cannot speak this way in court. I have never seen this before.”

Cardi testified that she had been visiting Los Angeles doing promotional work in February 2018 around that year’s NBA All-Star Game. She was four months into her pregnancy with the first of her three children with rapper Offset. She had told her inner circle she was having a baby, but not the public or her parents.

The obstetrician’s office had been closed to other patients on a Saturday for her privacy.

She said Ellis, a security guard for the building, followed her to her fifth-floor appointment. Cardi told jurors last week that she heard Ellis say her name into a phone and appeared to be filming her.

“I told her, ‘Why are you recording?’” Cardi testified, “and she said, ’Oh my bad.’ She practically apologized.’”

But the argument grew increasingly heated, she said.

“As we were arguing she’s backing me, she’s walking into me,” Cardi said.

Ellis testified that the incident left her humiliated and traumatized, and the scar on her face required cosmetic surgery. Ellis, who lost her job over the incident, sought damages that include medical expenses, compensation for emotional and physical suffering, and lost wages, along with punitive damages. She does not specify a total amount in the lawsuit but Cardi said from the stand that she is “suing me for $24 million.”

A receptionist who broke up the argument between Cardi and Ellis largely backed the rapper's account in testimony.

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Chloe Malle

Chloe Malle, daughter of Candice Bergen, to helm American Vogue

NEW YORK — Anna Wintour has passed the designer baton to Vogue.com editor and “proud ‘nepo baby'” Chloe Malle, daughter of the actress Candice Bergen, to helm the American iteration of the storied fashion magazine.

Vogue on Tuesday announced the promotion is effective immediately, catapulting the 39-year-old “The Run-Through” co-host — whose mom played fictional Vogue editor Enid Frick on “Sex and the City” — to Head of Editorial Content.

“Fashion and media are both evolving at breakneck speed, and I am so thrilled — and awed — to be part of that,” said Malle, who was promoted to editor of Vogue.com in the fall of 2023. “I also feel incredibly fortunate to still have Anna just down the hall as my mentor.”

“I’ve spent my career at Vogue working in roles across every platform — from print to digital, audio to video, events and social media,” said Malle, who began her tenure as Social Editor in 2011 and became Contributing Editor in 2016, “I love the title, I love the content we create, and I love the editors who create it. Vogue has already shaped who I am, now I’m excited at the prospect of shaping Vogue.”

The hiring comes just over two months after news broke that Wintour, 75, would step down as the magazine’s editor-in-chief, after 37 years in the role. In late June, it was reported that Wintour would stay on as Vogue’s global editorial director and Condé Nast’s global chief content officer.

Wintour said of selecting a successor that she “knew I had one chance to get it right,” and calls Malle one of the outlet’s “secret weapons when it comes to tracking fashion” and a “voracious, engaged journalist with an intuition for women’s changing interests.”

Speaking to The New York Times this week, Malle owned her title as a “proud ‘nepo baby,'” though she’s long wanted “to prove that I’m more than Candice Bergen’s daughter, or someone who grew up in Beverly Hills.”

“There is no question that I have 100% benefited from the privilege I grew up in,” admitted Malle, whose father is late French director-screenwriter Louis Malle. “It’s delusional to say otherwise. I will say, thought, that it has always made me work much harder.”

From combined wire services

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