Actress Shannen Doherty passed away on July 13 at the age of 53 following a battle with cancer. Leading up to her death, Doherty had made plans for her passing, which reportedly included a list of people she did not want to attend her funeral, according to the Daily Mail.
The Charmed alum was first diagnosed with cancer in 2015 before it went into remission in 2017. In 2020, Doherty formally revealed that it had returned and that she had been diagnosed with metastatic stage 4 cancer. Doherty had spoken emotionally but transparently about her plans surrounding her death in interviews and in her podcast, Let’s Be Clear, available through Spotify, Apple, and iHeart.
Shannen Doherty reportedly had a list of people who were not to attend her funeral
Discussing the aftermath of her passing, Doherty once said, “There’s a lot of people that I think would show up that I don’t want there.” She went on to explain, “I don’t want them there because their reasons for showing up aren’t necessarily the best reasons. Like, they don’t really like me and, you know, they have their reasons and good for them, but they don’t actually really like me enough to show up to my funeral.”
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Doherty did not name any specific names but did drop hints, asserting that she did not want her funeral to be an opportunity for some particular person to submit to the “pressure” of attending to “look bad.”
She added, “[They’ll show up] because it’s the politically correct thing to do, and they don’t want to look bad, so I kinda want to take the pressure off them and I want my funeral to be like a love fest. I don’t want people to be crying or people to privately be like, ‘Thank God that b—h is dead now.”
Other plans that she had established
Doherty had been making end-of-life plans for a while, even as she underwent treatment to combat her cancer. She had been giving away, selling, or donating her worldly possessions so that her mother would not have to contend with that task along with her grief should Doherty predecease her.
Doherty also had some additional plans for her funeral, besides her alleged list, along with what should be done with her remains. After the death of her beloved father in 2010 at the age of 66, Doherty wore some of his cremated ashes around her neck for a time. She reportedly gave her close friend, Chris Cortazzo, permission to do the same.
In her Let’s Be Clear podcast, she further specified, “I want [my remains] to be mixed with my dog, and I want it to be mixed with my dad. I do not want to be buried and not cremated.” Ultimately, she hoped her ashes might be scattered alongside her father’s in Malibu, where the two spent “precious time,” or else used as fertilizer to help a new tree grow strong.
