Admedia, Inc

'90210' star Shannen Doherty refuses to be 'written off' amid stage 4 breast cancer battle

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 10/5/21

Shannen Doherty sat down with Nightline's Juju Chang and opened up about her ongoing battle with stage 4 breast cancer for Good Morning America's "Cover Story" on Monday.

"I think work was always very fulfilling to me, but in a way, it's become even more fulfilling," the 50-year-old actress, director and producer said. "A lot of people who get diagnosed with stage 4, they sort of getting written off. It's assumed that they cannot work or they can't work at their full capacity. And that is not true. And that is something that I would really like for people to sort of stop assuming, and give us a chance to prove them wrong."

Doherty explained that she is "still on her first protocol" of treatment, "which is a very, very big thing" because "you just want to last on your protocols as long as possible so that you don't run out of protocols."

Doherty, known as Brenda Walsh on Beverly Hills, 90210 and Jenny Wilder on Little House on the Prairie, was first diagnosed in 2015. She went into remission in early 2017 but announced in February 2020 that the breast cancer had returned.

"A bucket list almost feels like those things that you check off before you die," Doherty told Chang. "And I never want to operate like that. I just want to operate as I don't have things to check off because I'm going to keep fighting to stay alive."

List of a Lifetime, one of two Lifetime movies Doherty will star in this month, chronicles a woman's quest for the daughter she gave up for adoption that is prompted by a breast cancer diagnosis, which results in a bucket list (h/t Deadline). The other is a reboot of Dying to Belong (1997).

More must-reads: