Shannen Doherty Reveals That She Has Stage Four Breast Cancer

• Shannen Doherty reveals in a new interview that she has stage four breast cancer.
• She originally had cancer back in 2015 and went into remission in 2017.
• Doherty kept this news a secret for a while, but has decided she now wants the world to hear it from her.

 

Shannen Doherty, formerly of 90210 and Charmed, shares that her cancer has returned as stage four breast cancer. “It’s going to come out in a matter of days or a week that — I’m stage four. So my cancer came back. And that’s why I’m here,” Doherty tells  ABC News’ Amy Robach in an interview. “I don’t think I’ve processed it. It’s a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways.”

The 48-year-old actress opens up about her cancer returning and just how she’s coping with it. “I definitely have days where I say why me. And then I go, well, why not me? Who else? Who else besides me deserves this? None of us do,” she says. “But I would say that my first reaction is always concern about how — how am I going to tell my mom, my husband.”

Shannen Doherty reveals she has stage four breast cancer

Doherty had her initial breast cancer diagnosis back in 2015. She has always been transparent with her fans about the disease, often documenting the process on social media. However, this time, she decided to keep the news to herself and continue to go back to work for the 90210 reboot. This was just four months after the tragic and sudden passing of her former co-star Luke Perry.

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“It’s so weird for me to be diagnosed and then somebody who was, you know, seemingly healthy to go first,” Doherty says about that whole situation. “It was really, like, shocking. And the least I could do to honor him was to do that show. I still haven’t done, in my opinion. So it’s a hard one.” She says she also didn’t want to tell anyone right away because she wanted to prove that she could still work.

Wanting to prove she can still work regardless of the diagnosis

“One of the reasons, along with Luke — that I did ‘90210’ and didn’t really tell anybody because I thought, people can look at that other people with stage four can work too. Like, you know, our life doesn’t end the minute we get that diagnosis. We still have some living to do,” Doherty explains in the interview.

She kept her diagnosis a secret, only telling a few close people. Doherty would often lean on co-star Brian Austin Green to help her get through the more grueling days on-set. “I had moments of great anxiety where I thought, ‘I can’t really do this,’ and Brian was the one person who — of that group of people that knew — that I told, like, pretty quickly and said, ‘Here, the — this is what I’m dealing with,'” she says. “So prior to shooting he would always call me and say, ‘Listen, you know, whatever happens, I have your back.’ He would look at me and be like, ‘We got this, kiddo’… so Brian helped me through a lot.”

We are praying for better health and well wishes to Shannen Doherty at this difficult time. Take a look at the interview below, where she publicly shares this for the first time.