TRIGGER WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault. If you are affected by any of the issues mentioned, contact 1800 737 732 or visit the 1800 RESPECT website here.
Fran Drescher has spoken about the cancer battle she faced in her early 40s.
In a sitdown interview with People magazine this week, The Nanny star said she was diagnosed with uterine cancer when she was 42 years old, even though she didn’t fit the profile.
“I ended up being diagnosed with uterine cancer. But uterine cancer typically hits women that are post-menopausal or obese,” she told the publication.
The now 68-year-old said she “slipped between the cracks”.
“Mine was in stage one, which means it was resting on the uterine lining but it hadn’t penetrated it, it hadn’t started to dig in, so I was very lucky,” she explained.
While the 90s sitcom star was able to fully recover from the experience, it did mean that she wasn’t able to have children with her then-husband Peter Jacobson.
“I was, at that point, with a man 16 years my junior. For the first time in my life, I wanted to have his kid. My destiny was that that wasn’t ever gonna happen,” she said.
Fran believes her uterine cancer was linked to a traumatic experience she endured decades earlier when she was in her 20s.
In 2020, she revealed that she was raped at gunpoint in 1985 while her then-husband Peter was tied up and forced to watch her ordeal.
“It was strange — and kind of poetic — that my reproductive organs, of all things, had cancer,” she told CNN’s Ana Cabrera at the time.
“But it was also an amazing affirmation that pain finds its way to exactly the right place in the body if you don’t deal with it.
“[Because] I hadn’t been paying attention to my own vulnerabilities, my pain from the rape lodged itself in my uterus. No one else around me had cancer. That was a rude awakening.”
In the interview, Fran explained that she was sexually assaulted by a man who was out on parole at the time.
“So it’s very disheartening to think he was incarcerated and then he was let go and then he went on a rampage. And I was not the only woman that he had raped,” she said.
“My girlfriend was raped too while Peter was tied up and blindfolded.”
Fran said her photographic memory helped her assist the police with tracking down and arresting her assailant.
“I at least have the closure, which a lot of women sadly do not have,” the actress added.
“But I do, that he’s locked away now for good and will never do that again and I don’t have to worry that I see him every time I turn a corner.”
The actress, who was presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, also issued a warning to other women who have been victims of sexual violence.
“Don’t ignore something and hope it goes away or drive yourself into an early grave because you feel like you have too much stuff to do for everyone else,” she warned.
“That is a pitfall women often experience. I’m here to say, ‘Stop that!’”
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