William Shatner and his daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch have opened up about facing separate stage 4 cancer diagnoses within months of each other, describing how they relied on one another during an intensely difficult period.
The pair spoke about their health battles in a new interview published in July 2026, with Shatner, now 95, reflecting on how his family helped him through a diagnosis that came shortly after his daughter’s own treatment.
In 2022, Melanie, 61, was already undergoing chemotherapy for stage 4 breast cancer when she reached out to her father in the middle of the night while overwhelmed with fear.
‘I was having a moment and was hysterical,’ she recalled in a joint interview with her and her dad, per People. ‘I called you and said, ‘I think I’m dying.”
Shatner arrived at her home just 15 minutes later and tried to reassure her.
“This is going to be a blip in your life. You’re going to get through this, and it’ll be a memory.”
As Melanie was nearing the end of her treatment, Shatner received devastating news of his own. In June 2023, the actor learned he had stage 4 malignant melanoma that had spread to both his lungs and his brain.
“I remember vividly thinking, ‘I don’t have the strength to take care of myself and lose my father at the same time,'” Melanie said.
Both have since been declared cancer-free.
Melanie said she discovered the lump by chance in July 2022, even though a mammogram five months earlier had come back clear.
“I woke up in the middle of the night, and my finger moved up right beneath my breast. I felt a little bump and thought, ‘It’s just a bug bite,'” she said.
During a follow-up scan, a technician at first did not spot anything concerning. But after asking for another look, the lump was finally identified.
Further tests revealed HER2-positive breast cancer that had already spread to her lymph nodes.
Over roughly 18 months, she went through several rounds of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and 30 radiation sessions.
When Melanie voiced concerns about how expensive treatment might become, Shatner stepped in to make sure finances were not another source of stress.
“You said to me, ‘I do not want you to worry. Just send me the bills,'” she said.
Shatner’s own cancer journey began with a lump on his cheek that had first been brushed off by a family doctor as a blocked salivary gland.
The warning signs only became more serious when a plastic surgeon friend noticed it while they were horseback riding together.
“He placed his hands on my cheeks, and he said with love in his voice, ‘You better get this out,'” Shatner said.
He later underwent surgery and then spent two years receiving immunotherapy aimed at tumors in his lungs and brain.
Dr. Omid Hamid of The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, who helped develop the immunotherapy drugs used in Shatner’s treatment, told People that patients with that diagnosis once faced a far bleaker outlook.
“Twenty years ago, the average survival rate for those with his diagnosis was six to eight months,” he said, adding that modern combination therapies are ‘very tolerable in older patients.’
By late 2024, both father and daughter had been told they were cancer-free.
They are now preparing to launch a podcast together, No Time but Now, which premieres July 29 and will feature conversations with health specialists and other survivors.
Looking back on everything they endured, Shatner said the experience has deepened his sense of gratitude for life’s small wonders.
“I’m thinking of the miracle of a hummingbird, and of my dog taking a ball, and my children,” he said.
“I’m aware of the magic of it all.”