Janice
10-04-2003, 01:15 AM
Suzanne Somers on Facing Cancer
by Daniel R. Coleridge
TV GUIDE Insider
Back in early 2001, Suzanne Somers went on CNN's Larry King Live and revealed she was battling breast cancer. How is the 56-year-old actress's health today? "My health is good," she tells TV Guide Online. "I have two more years before I can go, 'Yippee!' But I'm feeling great."
A few years ago, Somers reconciled with her late Three's Company co-star, John Ritter. But, even after they'd put old showbiz squabbles behind them, they weren't very involved in each other's lives. Thus, before she publicly came out about her illness, Somers says her secretiveness caused tension and misunderstandings with people. "Nobody knew," she recalls. "I didn't tell anybody. I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want to be thought of as sick.
"The CBS Morning Show had wanted the [Three's Company trio] to be on for a reunion, and I couldn't go, because I was so deep in my treatments and sick that I just passed on it. And I guess the feeling was that I didn't want to be on the show with them, or that I was too good to be on the show with them. The conjecture was, 'She didn't want to turn up.'
"But [Ritter] said some snide remark about me on television," she recalls, "and then the cancer thing came out and he felt very bad about that. And I felt very bad that he felt bad. We all felt bad. It was two friends trying to let each other know that all that happened shouldn't have happened, and it is too bad, and let's start over and continue with what we knew was good about the relationship."
After learning of Ritter's passing, Somers says, "all I could think of was that I was so glad that he didn't die without us having had those moments of resolution. I love John Ritter and I will miss him terribly, and I am so unbelievably sorry for his family." — Additional reporting by Michael Ausiello
by Daniel R. Coleridge
TV GUIDE Insider
Back in early 2001, Suzanne Somers went on CNN's Larry King Live and revealed she was battling breast cancer. How is the 56-year-old actress's health today? "My health is good," she tells TV Guide Online. "I have two more years before I can go, 'Yippee!' But I'm feeling great."
A few years ago, Somers reconciled with her late Three's Company co-star, John Ritter. But, even after they'd put old showbiz squabbles behind them, they weren't very involved in each other's lives. Thus, before she publicly came out about her illness, Somers says her secretiveness caused tension and misunderstandings with people. "Nobody knew," she recalls. "I didn't tell anybody. I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want to be thought of as sick.
"The CBS Morning Show had wanted the [Three's Company trio] to be on for a reunion, and I couldn't go, because I was so deep in my treatments and sick that I just passed on it. And I guess the feeling was that I didn't want to be on the show with them, or that I was too good to be on the show with them. The conjecture was, 'She didn't want to turn up.'
"But [Ritter] said some snide remark about me on television," she recalls, "and then the cancer thing came out and he felt very bad about that. And I felt very bad that he felt bad. We all felt bad. It was two friends trying to let each other know that all that happened shouldn't have happened, and it is too bad, and let's start over and continue with what we knew was good about the relationship."
After learning of Ritter's passing, Somers says, "all I could think of was that I was so glad that he didn't die without us having had those moments of resolution. I love John Ritter and I will miss him terribly, and I am so unbelievably sorry for his family." — Additional reporting by Michael Ausiello