Dark Secrets Demi Moore's Daughters Revealed About Their Famous Mom
Demi Moore has been treading around headlines since releasing her eye-opening memoir Inside Out. In the book, the star reveals a lifetime of trauma, details about her intense struggle with addiction, and some shocking alleged truths about her former husband Ashton Kutcher (who allegedly cheated on the star and pushed her into having threesomes). The actress' three daughters — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Willis — were children when their mother relapsed after 20 years of sobriety, and they witnessed the star transform from the rock that held them together into someone they didn't recognize.
In a Nov. 2019 episode of Red Table Talk, Jada Pinkett Smith welcomed Moore, Rumer, and Tallulah to openly discuss how their mother's alcoholism and trauma impacted their lives. The trio painted a shocking picture of an anxiety-riddled childhood, but this wasn't the first time the star's kids revealed some pretty intense stories about their troubled mother. Here are some truly shocking revelations from Demi Moore's daughters.
Demi Moore married her daughter's Hollywood crush
There's nothing quite like having a crush on your stepdad, but that's the price of your mama being a Hollywood star. In an interview with Howard Stern, Rumer Willis admitted that "it was definitely weird for a minute" when her mom, Demi Moore, started dating That '70s Show star Ashton Kutcher in 2003. The young actress had posters of Kutcher on her bedroom walls. In other words: Moore moved in on her daughter's celebrity crush. Does that break girl code? "I feel like I told my sister that at some point ... 'Alright well, gotta cross him off the list,'" Willis told Stern.
Though Willis admitted that Kutcher "was a really great stepfather" and her "perspective" on him "shifted very quickly," she did take a moment to rip down the pictures of her stepdad plastered across her bedroom and tear something new out of "Teen Beat" to replace them. Overall, she admitted that she was impressed that her then 40-year-old mother could score a 25-year-old A-lister. "I feel like I was kind of impressed like, 'Yeah girl, get it.'"
Kutcher and Willis reportedly still have a warm relationship, though he's since moved on from Moore to Mila Kunis. According to E! News, the actress reconnected with her former stepfather after Kunis gave birth to the couple's daughter Wyatt.
Demi Moore's insecurity rattled Rumer Willis' self-esteem
Demi Moore was once the highest paid actress in Hollywood. It seems like she'd have all the confidence in the world, but in reality, she was absolutely rattled by insecurity and mental illness. In the star's eye-opening memoir Inside Out (via Entertainment Tonight), the actress opened up about how her traumatic childhood — including her mother's multiple suicide attempts — led her to a life addled by "addiction, anxiety, eating disorders, insomnia and PTSD." This trauma later affected her daughters.
In the star's Red Table Talk episode, her daughter Rumer Willis made the heartbreaking realization that her mother's lack of self-love wrecked her own perception of herself. As fans might remember, the actress' daughter didn't have the easiest go at fame. She was routinely bullied by tabloids for her appearance. Some celebrity bloggers even went as far as a labeling her a 'potato head.' The star admitted that she wondered, "If my mom doesn't love herself, like, how can I do that?"
"[I felt] innately unloveable somehow, no matter how I look, what I weigh, how my hair looks, whatever the outside reflection is," she told host Jada Pinkett Smith. "There's something innately about me that I have to earn love from people and constantly prove myself."
Tallulah Willis felt like she didn't know her mother
Despite her traumatic childhood, Demi Moore put on a tough face for her children. During an appearance on the Present Company with Krista Smith podcast, the actress even admitted that she held off on releasing her memoir to protect her daughters, who she believed were too young to grapple with some of its content. Unfortunately, Moore's closed-off strength ended up driving a wedge between her and her daughter Tallulah Willis. The lack of vulnerability made it difficult to connect.
In Moore's Red Table Talk episode, Tallulah admitted that she didn't feel very close to her mother growing up. "I felt like my mom made a choice to hold back certain things from, like, sharing about her past," she revealed. "And I think that it always made me feel very far away from her, and it always made me feel like I didn't know her very well."
Willis and Moore actually have endured similar struggles. They've both fought addiction, and Tallulah revealed they approached intimate relationships in a similarly unhealthy way. "In the book, she talks about, I think, one of the first times she had sex, and how she felt she needed to, and how she felt like it was something expected of her," she told host Jada Pinkett Smith. "Which has pretty much been my exact story."
Demi Moore hid her relapse from her daughters, even if it was obvious
Demi Moore's struggle with addiction has been well-documented throughout her decades-long career. According to Page Six, the actress started heavily drinking in her 20s and later escalated to using cocaine. Though she was sober for nearly 20 years, she relapsed in her 40s during her relationship with Ashton Kutcher after enduring a miscarriage at around six months.
Moore's relapse was something that was difficult for her children to reckon with because their family allegedly never talked about it. In Moore's Red Table Talk episode, Tallulah admitted, "I had no idea what was going on. She had been sober my entire childhood, and then she drank, and then I just knew that I was scared ... There was sort of many years of saying she was sober and she wasn't, and we couldn't it trust it."
It wasn't just Moore who was hiding her relapse from her children. Tallulah also revealed that "all of the adults around" them tried to "protect" the three sisters by saying Moore was sober when she wasn't. "There was a complete lack of trust," she told Pinkett Smith.
Tallulah Willis treated Demi Moore like a child during her relapse
In Demi Moore's memoir Inside Out (via Radar Online), the actress admitted that she threw aside 20 years of sobriety on a simple minibar beer after her then-husband Ashton Kutcher mused — over a glass of wine — that he "[didn't] know if alcoholism is a real thing." According to Fox News, Moore also began abusing Vicodin at that time, and shrunk down to just 102 lbs. before eventually being "rushed to the hospital after smoking synthetic marijuana and inhaling nitrous oxide at a party." Before she hit rock bottom, her children had to make the difficult call to cut their mother out of their lives. They didn't speak for three years, and Tallulah Willis admitted it was mostly because her relapse was "like the sun went down" and "a monster came."
"I remember there's just the anxiety that would come up in my body when I could sense her eyes were shutting a little bit more, the way she was speaking. Or she would be a lot more affectionate with me if she wasn't sober," she revealed during Red Table Talk. "And there were moments where it would get angry, and I recall being very upset and kind of treating her like a child and speaking to her like a child, and kind of being like, you know, 'Please, like, get away from me.'"
As of this writing, Moore is on good terms with her children and is sober once again.
Demi Moore's daughters found her intimidating
Demi Moore's memoir revealed that the star lived a very difficult life, but the way she coped with her issues actually intimidated her youngest daughter. During their Red Table Talk episode, Tallulah Willis admitted that her mother's strength was frightening. "I don't think my mom was raised, she was forged," Willis said, adding, "You know, like, she was made. And the strength that comes from that is intimidating, and it's scary."
For so long, Moore was her daughters' stability. She was unwavering, and during her Red Table Talk, she admitted that she felt like she had an incredibly small "room for error" with her daughters. In other words: she had to be strong, even if she was suffering. Both Rumer Willis and Demi agreed this perspective was self-inflicted, and it also seems like that's what made her relapse so jarring to her kids. They had never seen their mother vulnerable.
Tallulah Willis believed her mom didn't love her
Demi Moore was married to Ashton Kutcher for eight years, and the relationship was reportedly very codependent. During their Red Table Talk episode, the actress admitted that her "addiction to Ashton ... was probably almost more devastating" than her substance abuse issues because it "emotionally" took her away from her family. In truth, her daughters felt completely forgotten, particularly Tallulah Willis, who was left behind when both Scout and Rumer Willis fled the nest. Their codependent marriage caused Demi's youngest daughter to doubt her relationship with her mom completely. She was only around nine years old when the pair first started dating in 2003.
"You know, watching the behavior with Ashton those years — because everyone left the house and it was just me living there — and I felt very forgotten, and I felt like I developed and I nurtured a narrative that she didn't love me, and I truly believed it," Tallulah told host Jada Pinkett Smith.
Demi Moore's desire to have more kids drove Rumer Willis out of the house
Around the time that Demi Moore started trying to have kids with Ashton Kutcher, Rumer Willis found herself completely fed up. She didn't understand why her mother was "so desperate" to have another child when she already had three children, and she certainly didn't understand their codependent relationship. In their Red Table Talk episode, Moore's eldest daughter admitted, "I was so angry, because I felt like something that was mine had been taken away. And I think also when she wanted to have another baby, it was like — and then it wasn't happening, and then there was so much focus on that — it was like, 'Oh, well, we're not enough.'"
Moore revealed to The New York Times that she saw her relationship with Kutcher as "a do-over, like I could just go back in time and experience what it was like to be young, with him." Of course, reliving your 20s isn't exactly possible with daughters who are, in fact, nearing their 20s themselves. It's not surprising that Willis felt dejected enough to move out as her mom struggled to have another child. She did end up feeling guilty, however, after seeing just how big Moore's pregnancy belly was before she lost the child, but the fracture in their relationship was so severe at that Willis never asked her mom if she was okay after the tragic miscarriage.
Rumer Willis was 'shunned' by her family over her relationship with her mom
Rumer Willis really struggled during her mother's relapse. At the time the three sisters stopped talking to Moore, she began struggling with substance abuse of her own and started experiencing panic attacks. It got so bad that she once made her friend call 911. Though Scout and Tallulah Willis didn't talk to their mom for three years, Rumer felt a sort of responsibility and eventually caved.
Amidst Demi's excommunication, Rumer served as a sort of "ambassador for the family" for the struggling actress. During their Red Table Talk episode, she revealed that her mother's friends would call her worried and beg her to intervene. She felt it was her duty to "fix" things, but this ended up pitting her against her sisters. Her family "shunned [her] and called her a traitor," and she felt completely alone.
"I was like, then I'll have no one. I'll have my mom, who is not capable of being my mom right now, and then the rest of my family is just not going to speak to me anymore," Rumer told host Jada Pinkett Smith.
Rumer Willis was the one who called 911 during her mom's overdose
Demi Moore eventually hit rock bottom with her addiction in 2012. In her memoir Inside Out (via OK!), the star detailed how she had a seizure at a birthday party after inhaling nitrous oxide and smoking synthetic marijuana. The actress claimed "everything went blurry" and she felt like she could see herself "floating out of [her] body into swirling colors." Though it was previously reported that her friends called 911, in their Red Table Talk episode, Rumer Willis revealed that she was the one on the phone.
"I was there in the other room with 911, panicking, because I'm like, 'All right, either my mom's going to die and I'm not gonna be in the room. I'm going to feel the guilt of that for the rest of my life, or I'm going to be there and see this image of my mom that I will never get out of my head,'" Willis told host Jada Pinkett Smith. "So, like, what do I do?"
Willis also feared that she was witnessing her mother die, and that she'd have to be the one to notify her sisters that "they're never going to talk to [their mother] again." This, however, was not the most terrifying part to the young star. She admitted that taking her mother on the plane to rehab was "the scariest thing [she's] ever had to do in [her] life.
Tellulah Willis' addiction brought their family back together
It took another tragedy for the Willis-Moore family to be brought back together after years of not speaking. It was Tallulah's addiction — not her mother's — that helped them all bury the hatchet. In their episode of Red Table Talk, Moore's youngest daughter revealed that she first started drinking when she was 14 years old. It was the typical teenage experience of snagging some sweet champagne, but by the time she was 15, she almost died of alcohol poisoning.
At the height of Tellulah's addiction, Rumer had kicked her younger sister out of her home. She briefly lived in a "scary a–" apartment before her father relocated her to the Beverly Hills Hotel. The day Bruce Willis welcomed his new daughter with second wife Emma Heming, Tallulah hit rock bottom. The star claimed she had "taken a bunch of codeine" and cocaine, and when Scout came in to tell her the baby news, she couldn't wake her up. "I had no regard for my life," she told host Jada Pinkett Smith.
After that incident, Rumer and Scout "basically" had an intervention. They brought Tallulah to their mother. She moved in with Moore and chose to seek professional treatment. "When we did Tallulah's family week, it was the first time the five of our immediate family had been together in, I don't even know how long," Rumer told Pinkett Smith.