EXCLUSIVE EastEnders star Samantha Womack is cancer-free: 'I feel very thankful for my life'
Former EastEnders star Samantha Womack bravely announced her cancer diagnosis back in August with a heartfelt Instagram post. And in our interview the actress reveals the fantastic news she's now cancer-free following surgery.
In August, Samantha announced that she had breast cancer. It came in the wake of Olivia Newton-John’s passing – the Grease legend having battled with the disease for 30 years. “I think it [going through cancer] shifts your perspective and suddenly everything feels really important and really vital and you suddenly just appreciate everything.”
Samantha booked in for a private appointment at a breast clinic in Wimpole Street, London, to have a biopsy and mammogram. It was there that doctors confirmed they’d found a 2cm tumour and gave her the diagnosis of stage one to two breast cancer, with it spreading to one of her lymph nodes – known as a sentinel lymph node.
“You hear the words chemo and cancer and radiotherapy and you think, ‘Oh my goodness, the next year of our lives is going to be consumed every day and it’s going to be really tough,’” she says. “But we’ve tried to break it down a little bit into component parts and not let it dominate our lives. We’re dealing with it on a day-to-day basis.”
Oliver adds, “Sam is so, so strong – she’s the strongest person I know. But what comes with that is potentially not thinking about herself or putting herself first. She’s always thinking about other people and she sometimes forgets herself. It’s OK if you need to just be quiet for a while. You can just stop. If you want to be quiet, be quiet, if you want to cry, cry. It’s part of a bigger process.
“The thing with breast cancer, as a woman, it’s such a brutal attack on your femininity,” she says candidly. “Your breasts and your hair and all of those things they represent, the things that you hold on to as feeling attractive, but also make you feel feminine as a woman… It feels very brutal. “I’d had the ultrasound and Lily spoke to me and she said, ‘Oh, you look strange.’ And for a moment I was like, ‘Do I tell her? Do I not tell her?’ And then I thought I’ll wait until I get the biopsy results back.
“They were worried, but I’m very militant about getting on with it. I tried very hard to not be scared in front of them, because I thought if I look scared in front of them, then they’re going to be scared.” Oliver has been by her side every step of the way, holding her hand through her appointments and waiting while she had her surgery.
However, her outlook is optimistic and she is looking forward to returning to her Valencian home for a well-earned rest. The couple bought the property together and plan to split their time between there and the UK, but that is where their big commitments to each other end – for now. “I wouldn’t rule anything out,” she says of another marriage.
“I feel very proud of us. When we’re all together and laughing, I think, ‘We’ve managed a potentially really difficult situation well’.”