William Shatner and his daughter Melanie have said they battled stage 4 cancer at the same time.
People reported that the 95-year-old Star Trek legend, famous for playing Enterprise captain James T. Kirk, and his 61-year-old daughter Melanie supported each other through their joint cancer journeys, and are now cancer-free.
Melanie Shatner Gretsch received chemotherapy for stage 4 breast cancer. Meanwhile, In June 2023, William Shatner was diagnosed with stage 4 malignant melanoma that had spread to his lungs and brain. Shatner had surgery to remove the tumor on his face, then two years of immunotherapy for the cancer in his lungs and brain. In late 2024 both were declared cancer-free.
Both are now set to launch a podcast called No Time but Now, on which they interview health experts and other survivors. “I’m healthier now than I’ve been in years," Shatner said. "The brain is like a muscle. It feeds on activity."
It was recently revealed that the team behind current Star Trek show, Strange New Worlds, have tried to get Shatner himself back for a guest appearance ever since the series launched — despite the fact the last played the character when he was 60 years old, in 1994’s Star Trek Generations (the movie that killed Kirk off). The idea was that Shatner would play a version of Kirk who stayed in Depression-era New York with Joan Collins' Edith Keeler following the events of the episode The City on the Edge of Forever.
"I have been asked to come back as Kirk so many times. If Kirk is going to come back, it has to mean something,” Shatner said at a Vancouver convention in 2025, according to The Direct.
Photo by Barry King/WireImage.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
