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In PEOPLE’s latest cover story, the TV icon and his daughter open up about surviving their shocking diagnoses together — and how they’re finding gratitude in all things big and small
NEED TO KNOW
- William Shatner and his daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch supported each other through simultaneous stage 4 cancer journeys
- Both are now cancer-free and credit groundbreaking treatments and strong family support for their recoveries
- The duo is launching a health, wellness and longevity podcast, No Time but Now, on July 29
Three years ago in the middle of the night, William Shatner’s daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch really needed her dad.
Deep in chemotherapy at the time for stage 4 breast cancer, “I was having a moment and was hysterical,” recalls Melanie in PEOPLE’s latest cover story. “I called you and said, ‘I think I’m dying.’” Fifteen minutes later Shatner was standing in her driveway, reminding her of her resilience.
“He gave me, what I think of ever since I was a little girl, a ‘daddy bear hug,’” she says. “He said, ‘This is going to be a blip in your life. You’re going to get through this, and it’ll be a memory.’”
Sitting next to Melanie, 61, in the sun-soaked sitting room of her Los Angeles-area home, Shatner, 95, is sharp, funny — and fiercely proud of his youngest daughter (he’s also dad to her sisters Leslie, 67, and Lisabeth, 65, with their late mom, actress Gloria Rand). “We’re a very together family,” he emphasizes. “We’re bonded by all kinds of difficulties that we’ve overcome.”
It’s been an especially trying few years for the Shatners. Just as Melanie was visualizing the finish line for her cancer treatment, the family was dealt another blow in June 2023 when Shatner was diagnosed with stage 4 malignant melanoma that had spread to his lungs and brain.
“I remember vividly thinking, ‘I don’t have the strength to take care of myself and lose my father at the same time,’” says Melanie. But Shatner was unshakable: “They said, ‘You got cancer. If you came in later, you would have been dead.’ See? That’s my life,” he says. “I think the universe is taking care of me.”
It’s a mantra the Montreal-born screen icon has wielded all his life. As he amassed a legion of Trekkies with his role as Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, Shatner steamrolled through any challenges, from grieving for his own dad when he was in his 30s to career setbacks and navigating multiple public divorces.
Today he and Melanie are both cancer-free — and surviving their health crises has brought everything into sharp focus. “I’m thinking of the miracle of a hummingbird, and of my dog taking a ball, and my children,” he says of finding gratitude in things both big and small. “I’m aware of the magic of it all.”
It’s an outlook that Melanie, who grew up with anxious tendencies, has also learned to embrace. On July 29 the father-daughter duo are launching a new weekly podcast series titled No Time but Now (presented by LifeWave), on which they interview health experts and other survivors, including end-of-life advocate Alua Arthur, Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton, “The King of Chemo” Ian Ward, Dying to Be Me author Anita Moorjani and pioneering nutrition researcher Dr. William Li.
“It’s easy for us in this lovely home to say, ‘Make your life meaningful.’ It’s much more difficult to be poverty-stricken and wonder how you’re going to get through it. I’ve been there,” says Shatner. “But it’s also possible to endure that and be aware of the beauty around you.” Adds Melanie: “[Overcoming cancer] changed my life. I’m not so afraid anymore, and there’s so much freedom and joy.”
Melanie discovered the lump on her breast by chance in July 2022. “I woke up in the middle of the night, and my finger moved up right beneath my breast. I felt a littel bump and thought, ‘It’s just a bug bite,’” she says.
Though she had had a clear mammogram five months earlier, she went in for an imaging appointment the next day. The technician initially found nothing concerning, but “something pushed me back and said, ‘No, have her recheck it.’ She put the wand exactly where I put my finger and under her breath said, ‘Now, I would have missed that.’”
Testing confirmed she had HER2-positive breast cancer that had spread to lymph nodes in her chest. A mom to two daughters with her husband, actor Joel Gretsch, “she was very conscious of the importance of her life for herself and for her family,” Shatner recalls. “I was devastated.”
When she expressed concern about the enormous cost of cancer treatment, he wouldn’t hear of it. “You said to me, ‘I do not want you to worry. Just send me the bills,’” she says. “Then you made me laugh so hard when I was still going to the doctor a year later. You said, ‘You’ve got to get well. We’re going to be in the poorhouse!’”
Over the next year and a half, Melanie underwent multiple rounds of chemo with HER2-targeted therapies, a double mastectomy (she chose to skip reconstruction surgery) and 30 radiation therapy treatments. “Chemo was the most physically draining, and the radiation I found so emotionally draining,” she says.
As she was in the final stretch of her treatment, a lump on her dad’s cheek sparked concern. “I went to the family doctor, and he said, ‘It’s your salivary gland. It’s blocked. Just massage it,’” says Shatner.
The mass continued to grow, and a month later he asked a plastic-surgeon friend for his opinion while they were out riding horses. “He placed his hands on my cheeks, and he said with love in his voice, ‘You better get this out.’”
Shatner underwent surgery to remove the tumor on his face, which was followed by two years of immunotherapy to target the cancer in his lungs and brain. Even following his diagnosis, “he wouldn’t stop his life. He kept working and moving forward,” says Melanie of her dad. “Whenever he was home, Joel and I would bring dinner to him and watch movies, just always made sure that he’s not alone.”
Both are exceedingly grateful to their care teams. “We got the perfect doctors for her cancer and my cancer,” Shatner says.
Twenty years ago the average survival rate for those with his diagnosis was “six to eight months,” says Dr. Omid Hamid, the chief of translational research and immuno-oncology at The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, who helped develop the immunotherapies used to eradicate Shatner’s tumors.
“He was treated with a combination of two drugs, and they target areas in our immune system that serve to dampen the immune response. So when you view these drugs, it blocks that dampening and allows our immune system to be active and to recognize tumor cells as foreign,” he continues. “There are multiple combinations of this therapy that are now standard. It’s very tolerable in older patients. He’s doing phenomenally well.”
Dr. Carlie Thompson, a breast surgeon who worked at UCLA Health on Melanie’s care team, says “groundbreaking” treatments have changed the game for Melanie’s formerly often-incurable type of metastatic cancer.
“The unique and remarkable aspect of her story was that because she had limited metastatic disease and a type of breast cancer for which we have progressive treatments for, we were able to with a lot of treatment get her to the point where she has no evidence of disease,” says Dr. Thompson. “Melanie had angels on her side — and an important part of her message is she listened to them. It’s sometimes very hard in this busy world that we live in to stay tuned in to that voice in your heart and in your soul. Melanie was tuned in enough to hear that voice that saved her life.”
By late 2024 both were declared cancer-free. “It was the third time in my life I had heard him cry,” Melanie says of telling Shatner she was healthy again.
They’ve both found new purpose and passion: Melanie, who owned a clothing boutique for years, was a keynote speaker last October at Susan G. Komen’s More Than Pink Walk, and Shatner has two books (William Shatner... And You and Wisdom & Worries) and two records (Love & Other Mysteries and a metal album tentatively titled What the ‘F’ Is Metal) all coming by early 2027.
“I’m healthier now than I’ve been in years. The brain is like a muscle. It feeds on activity,” he says of staying busy.
Most important, they’re pouring as much time as possible into family. “Sundays used to be three and me — now there’s more than 15,” Shatner says, with five grandkids and two great-grandkids now joining him and his daughters for weekly dinners. Adds Melanie: “He really is the patriarch. We say ‘the Big Kahuna.’”
Both are cognizant of their mortality. Says Melanie, turning to her dad: “I do think you’re going to outlive me, but I have always thought if you go first, then I won’t be afraid because you’ll be the one to be there for me when I go.” Quips Shatner: “It’s a huge responsibility.”
After a long and full life, he isn’t looking for more accolades. “Statues are torn down at some point,” he says. “‘Legacy’ is doing good deeds and helping other people. That reverberates for the end of time.”
Read the original article on People
