Positive vibes. Shannen Doherty is living in the moment — and looking forward to the future — amid her battle with stage IV breast cancer.
“I’m good,” the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum, 49, told her best friend Sarah Michelle Gellar during a sit-down interview for Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, October 28. “I love it when people say, ‘We’re praying for you’ … but there comes a point where you go, ‘I got this.’ Like, I’m fine, I’m good. There’s a lot of people in the world that could use prayers, and I’m feeling great.”
After honoring her “amazing medical team,” Doherty took a moment to shut down the stigma that surrounds the disease, specifically in its later stages.
“I want people to not hear stage IV cancer and think of the person as gray and falling over,” she said. “You get written off so quickly even though you’re still vital and healthy and happy. People instantly think it’s a death sentence and it’s not.”
The Charmed alum assured Gellar, 43, that she is “doing better than OK” and feels “strong and healthy and confident and happy.”
Doherty was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2015. She was in remission by April 2017, but she announced in February that her cancer had returned in a more aggressive form.
“I definitely have days where I say, ‘Why me?’” she said on Good Morning America at the time. “And then I go, ‘Well, why not me? Who else? Who else besides me deserves this?’ None of us do.”
The actress decided to come forward with her most recent diagnosis before it came out in her lawsuit against State Farm, in which she alleged that her insurance policy should have covered the costs of the damage that the 2018 Woolsey Fire wreaked on her California home. In the suit, she stated that she was “dying” and unable to live “her remaining years peacefully in her home” because of the legal battle. (State Farm said in a statement to Us Weekly at the time, “We strongly believe we have upheld our commitment to our customer and have paid what we owe on this claim. We are prepared to defend our position in court.”)
Doherty told Elle in September that she hopes to “live another 10 or 15 years.”
