The popular 1980s television series Moonlighting starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd made its debut on streamer Hulu today, completed with one of Orson Welles’ last appearances.
Welles provided a 75 second introduction to the black and white Season 2 episode The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice.
The episode is nod to classic films with Welles assuring audiences that the sudden shift to black-and-white is not a sign there is something wrong with their televisions. Although Shepherd knew Welles through director Peter Bogdanovich, creator Glenn Gordon Caron told Entertainment Weekly that it was he, not Shepherd, who reached out to Welles.
“I picked up the phone and I called him myself and he answered the phone, much to my amazement,” Caron recalled. “I told him who I was. I told him what I wanted to do. And he said, ‘Send over the pages, and I’ll take a look.’ So I wrote this little monologue for him to introduce the show, and thought that was hysterically funny. So, he said, ‘Okay, I’ll come over and do it.’ It was very heady, quite frankly.”
In a 2014 interview with the Archive of American Television, Caron described how Welles was in poor health and in pain at the time. He had been warned Welles was “really a prick,” but instead found him to be “the nicest man and so thrilled to be there.” He described the shoot and Welles’ interaction with the crew as both magical and emotional. Caron noted Welles died a week after the taping.
Welles died on October 10, 1985 and the episode aired on ABC just five days later with a screen card dedication to Welles.
The 66 episodes of Moonlighting are being shown in high definition and includes lost scenes and 5.1 audio.
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