Jenna Fischer says one famous friend provided much-needed levity during her illness.
The “Office” actor recently disclosed her private year-long experience with breast cancer and, in a continued effort to raise awareness about lifesaving mammograms, is opening up about beating it — and named the first celebrity she called after her diagnosis.
“I called [Christina Applegate], and she answered the phone, and she said, ‘Which one is it?’” Fischer told Hoda Kotb in an exclusive “TODAY” show interview published Monday. “And I said, ‘It’s breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘I effing knew it.’”
“She’s salty,” the actor continued about her former co-star. “Salty language. I love her for it.”
Applegate not only starred opposite Fischer in 2011’s “Hall Pass,” but had been diagnosed with breast cancer herself in 2008, allowing her to relate to Fischer and put her in touch with fellow survivors. Fischer said Monday that they took her journey “together.”
Fischer only recently publicly announced her diagnosis, however, in an Instagram post for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The actor said Monday that, after going in for a routine mammogram last October that she’d been putting off, “there were a few spots.”
Fischer said the “dense tissue” in her breasts yielded inconclusive results, leading to an advised ultrasound and a later biopsy that determined a “10% chance it’s cancerous.” She recalled being on a hike when an email confirmed her Stage 1 ductal carcinoma.
“I think the word that really got to me was when we found out that I was triple-positive and my oncologist said chemotherapy,” the mother of two told Kotb, adding that she was in “disbelief” at the diagnosis. “That was when I really lost it.”
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Fischer, 50, ultimately underwent both radiation and a lumpectomy in addition to chemotherapy, which resulted in rampant hair loss and a difficult conversation with her kids, Weston Lee, 13, and 10-year-old Harper Marie.
“They’re going to see it,” she told Kotb. “And the biggest thing that I wanted them to know was that any ways that I seemed sick during this process were side effects of treatments. They weren’t cancer making me sick. That distinction, I think, really put them at ease.”
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Fischer continued, “And then we just kind of did it together. And they were amazing.”
The Primetime Emmy nominee, fortunately, caught the disease early despite her delayed mammogram last year but, despite now being cancer-free, said she is continuing her regimen of tamoxifen and Herceptin, two common breast cancer medications, for the next year.
Applegate, 52, was diagnosed in 2021 with multiple sclerosis. The central nervous system disease, which, according to the Mayo Clinic, affects both the brain and spinal cord, resulting in symptoms that can include slurred speech, cognitive issues, mood swings and numbness in limbs.