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It’s a path no father and daughter would ever choose to walk.
And yet, William Shatner says he and his youngest daughter, Melanie Shatner Gretsch, found themselves on it together after they were both diagnosed with advanced stages of cancer just months apart.
The 95-year-old Canadian actor, known for his iconic role as the daring Capt. James T. Kirk on Star Trek, told People magazine he faced his toughest challenge yet — this time off-screen — when he was diagnosed with Stage 4 malignant melanoma in June 2023. It had spread to his lungs and brain.
That was not long after Gretsch, 61, discovered a lump in her breast.
“I woke up in the middle of the night, and my finger moved up right beneath my breast,” she said in a joint interview with her father, published Wednesday. “I felt a little bump and thought, ‘It’s just a bug bite.'”
Testing confirmed otherwise.
While in the thick of chemotherapy, Gretsch recalled calling her dad for comfort and that he came over immediately, hugged her and reassured her that this would be “a blip” in her life.
“‘You’re going to get through this, and it’ll be a memory,'” she remembered him saying.
Gretsch was still in treatment when Shatner got his diagnosis.
But he remained unflappable.
“They said, ‘You got cancer. If you came in later, you would have been dead.’ See? That’s my life,” he told the magazine. “I think the universe is taking care of me.”
It would seem so. Both Shatner and Gretsch have been cancer free since late 2024. He says they found the “perfect doctors” for their illnesses.
Gretsch says she underwent multiple rounds of chemo, a double mastectomy and 30 radiation therapy treatments.
Shatner, meanwhile, says he underwent surgery to remove a tumor on his face, followed by two years of immunotherapy to target the cancer in his lungs and brain.
The pair says the experience has given them a deeper appreciation for life’s everyday moments.
“I’m thinking of the miracle of a hummingbird, and of my dog taking a ball, and my children,” Shatner said. “I’m aware of the magic of it all.”
CBC News has reached out to Shatner for comment but did not hear back before publication deadline.
