Shannen Doherty never gave up her dream of becoming a mother.
Just months before her death on July 13 from breast cancer, the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum provided more insight into her motherhood journey—and how that longtime desire affected the way she chose to treat her cancer.
“Not only not only did I want a child for myself, but I wanted it, you know, for my husband,” she said of trying to get pregnant with ex-husband Kurt Iswarienko in a January 2024 episode of her podcast Let’s Be Clear. “I wanted it for our marriage. I wanted him to have that part of himself fulfilled.”
During the episode, which featured Shannen’s longtime oncologist Dr. Lawrence Piro, she discussed her decision not to take tamoxifen—a hormone blocker often prescribed to treat or prevent breast cancer—following her remission in 2017.
“I was fairly certain it wasn't going to come back,” Shannen explained of her cancer, “because I believed that the reason why I got cancer was because I did IVF.”
She continued of Kurt, from whom she split in April 2023 after tying the knot in 2011, “I met my husband at the time later in years and you know a multitude of things happen and so when it was time to have that decision, we needed IVF. And I did a bunch of rounds of it.”
And as Dr. Piro reminded her during the podcast, one of the factors affecting Shannen’s decision not to take tamoxifen or receive other kinds of treatment after going into remission is that she still hoped to have a baby, and chemotherapy can sometimes cause menopause.
He also noted the ways cancer forced the Charmed star to reflect on what was important to her.
“Cancer and cancer treatment caused you to look back at you know your own life and to be very philosophical,” he told Shannen. “It made you want to have a child for another reason too, which is to be able to impart the very many things that you've learned in life, and the many feelings that you had, into raising a human being.”
Ultimately, Shannen’s cancer returned in 2019 and in 2020 she shared she had stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. And by November 2023, the cancer had spread to Shannen’s brain and bones.
But even then, Shannen was determined to live life to the fullest.
“I'm not done with living,” she told People at the time. “I'm not done with loving. I'm not done with creating. I'm not done with hopefully changing things for the better. I'm just not—I'm not done."
For more from Shannen’s illustrious career and life, keep reading.