William Shatner made specific plans for his own burial after battling stage IV skin cancer.
“I have in my will that there will be a tree over my body,” Shatner, 95, confirmed during a Thursday, November 12, appearance at the 2026 End Well Summit conference. “The whole family is doing that.”
The Star Trek icon attended the event at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles alongside his daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch to discuss their simultaneous battles with stage IV cancer, per Entertainment Weekly. (William also shared daughters Leslie, 68, and Lisabeth, 65, with his first wife, Gloria Rand.)
In William’s case, Melanie, 62, encouraged him to get checked when she spotted a lump on his cheek in 2022.
“The family doctor said, ‘Massage it, it’s a saliva gland.’ I massaged it for a month, and it got bigger. So then I went to another doctor,” William remembered. “He said, ‘We’ve got to get that out right now, it’s melanoma.'”
Around the same time, Melanie was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. She ultimately underwent a double mastectomy, 30 radiation treatments and several rounds of chemo with HER2-targeted therapies.
“It was like 10 o’clock at night [when I called my dad with the news], which for both of us is like 4 in the morning. I called him and I just started to cry and I said, ‘I’m so scared I’m going to die.’ I could hear the sheets rustle, and he got out of bed and he said, ‘I’m coming over,'” she remembered.
Melanie continued, “I needed my dad. I need my daddy to come and look under the bed for monsters, and tell me there aren’t any, and ‘you’re going to be fine.’ And it’s exactly what he did. He drove over, parked in our driveway, and I came outside. He gave me one of those great dad bear hugs, and said, ‘This is going to be a blip in your life. It’s going to pass and you’re going to get through this.'”
During the Shatners’ End Well panel, William acknowledged that having to face stage IV cancer alongside his daughter forced him to consider the realities of death.
“We all dimly realize that we’re going to die [someday] in the future,” he noted. “That perception, that immediacy changes everything. … You can be sanguine somewhat and stifle the fear somewhat and make it work for you. We lucked out. It worked for us.”
William and Melanie were ultimately declared cancer-free in late 2024.
In April, William was forced to deny a cruel hoax claiming that he’d been diagnosed with stage IV brain cancer.
“[Facebook groups] have created stories that say I have stage 4 brain cancer, was in some kind of fight with Erika Kirk and that I’m dying,” he explained via X. “All their stories are monetized. Most of the stories use an AI image of me. Facebook Support will not remove the page.”
He clarified that “none of these stories are true,” adding, “They apparently seem genuine enough for fans to repost them across social media and send messages of support to me and my family all while the culprits behind the account make money.”
“This is the downside of AI and yellow journalism,” he argued. “While [AI] can be a wonderful tool in the right hands; it can be used as a weapon in the wrong hands. If you see a bizarre story about me; unless you see it posted on one of my verified accounts take it with a grain of salt.”
