Shannen Doherty is going through a lot at the moment, but she still has a sense of humor — even when it comes to her divorce from Kurt Iswarienko.
Doherty, 52, was participating in a Beverly Hills, 90210 panel discussion at 90s Con in Tampa, Florida, on Sunday, September 17, when she made an offhand comment about her split from Iswarienko, 39. “My other profession is getting engaged, married and divorced, and I’m doing that very well,” Doherty quipped.
Doherty filed for divorce from Iswarienko in April after 11 years of marriage. At the time, her rep, Leslie Sloane, claimed that Iswarienko’s agent was “intimately involved” in the split. “Divorce is the last thing Shannen wanted,” Sloane added. “Unfortunately, she felt she was left with no other option.”
The estranged couple, who tied the knot in October 2011, initially separated in January, according to documents obtained by Us Weekly. Doherty is allegedly requesting spousal support.
While Doherty was unceremonious about her divorce, she got serious when talking about her battle with breast cancer, which recently spread to her brain. “I have a fight for my life that I deal with every day,” she told the crowd on Sunday. “I think I am really great.”
When audience members gave her a standing ovation, an emotional Doherty couldn’t hold back tears. “You guys know how much I love crying constantly,” she said. “And I do, it seems. So, thank you.”
Doherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2015. She underwent chemotherapy through February 2017, and two months later, she announced that she was in remission.
In February 2020, however, Doherty revealed that she’d been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. During an interview with Good Morning America, she said that she initially kept the news to herself because she wanted to prove that people with cancer were still able to work. She also wanted to honor the memory of her Beverly Hills, 90210 costar Luke Perry by continuing to film the revival series BH90210.
“It’s so weird for me to be diagnosed and then somebody who was, you know, seemingly healthy to go first,” she said on GMA, adding that her stage IV diagnosis came just four months before Perry died of a stroke at age 52 in March 2019. “It was really, like, shocking. And the least I could do to honor him was to do that show.”
In June, Doherty shared with her social media followers that the cancer had spread to her brain. “January 12, the first round of radiation took place,” she wrote via Instagram at the time. “I am fortunate as I have great doctors like Dr Amin Mirahdi and the amazing techs at cedar sinai. But that fear…. The turmoil….. the timing of it all…. This is what cancer can look like.”
