William Shatner and his daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch revealed they were simultaneously battling stage 4 cancer.
The couple, who are now cancer-free, revealed in a new interview with People magazine that Melanie, 61, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in 2022 after discovering a lump in her breast.
A year later, the 95-year-old actor learned that he had stage 4 melanoma, which had spread to his lungs and brain.
Melanie said that in the year and a half following her diagnosis, she underwent multiple rounds of chemotherapy using HER2-targeted therapy, a double mastectomy and 30 rounds of radiation therapy.
But Melanie admitted that she was more concerned about William’s health.
“I remember thinking, ‘I don’t have the strength to take care of myself and lose my dad at the same time,’” she told the publication.
William explained that when Melanie was close to completing treatment, he noticed a lump on his cheek that turned out to be a growing tumor.
Star Trek Icon had surgery to remove the tumor and then spent two years undergoing immunotherapy to fight cancer in his lungs and brain.
“We have the perfect doctors to treat her cancer and my cancer,” William shared.
Melanie, who has two children with husband Joel Gretsch, said her father “didn’t stop living his life” and “kept working and moving forward” during his battle with cancer.
“Whenever he was home, Joel and I would bring him dinner and watch movies, just always making sure he wasn’t alone,” she recalled.
Melanie also said William helped her ease her worries about the cost of cancer treatment.
She recalled her father telling her, “I don’t want you to worry. Just send me the bills.”
“Then you made me laugh so much when I was still going to the doctor a year later,” Melanie recalled. “You said, ‘You need to get better. We’ll end up in an almshouse!”
William and Melanie are now launching a new podcast calledNo time but nowwhere they will interview health experts and other cancer survivors.
“It’s easy for us in this beautiful house to say, ‘Make your life meaningful.’ It’s much harder to be poor and wonder how you’re going to cope. I was there,” William told People magazine. “But it’s also possible to endure and be aware of the beauty around you.”
Melanie said: “(Overcoming cancer) has changed my life. I’m not so afraid anymore and there’s so much freedom and joy.”
William, who first revealed his cancer diagnosis in 2023, admitted he became “fearful” of dying in an interview with TV Insider earlier this month.
“I always ask questions because the older I get, the more scared I will be of dying with a question in my head, like, ‘What about…’,” he said.
“What is the meaning of life?! Damn, the meaning of life – and boom! I died!” – he joked. “It’s the fear of not knowing what you could learn. I’m concerned about understanding and perceiving information.”
William recently told Hello! magazine that his current “motivation” is not to die.
“I want to stay healthy and functional, and I would like to die in my sleep because … I have people I love, my family, my dogs,” he said.
This story originally appeared on Page Six and is republished here with permission.