Getting a breast cancer diagnosis the day after winning the award for Outstanding Lead Actress at the 2017 Emmy’s really caught Veep actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus off-guard. Like so many cancer survivors, the shock of the initial diagnosis left the actress at a loss for what to do … about work, treatment, and her future in general.
Louis-Dreyfus recently opened up about what it was like to plan the filming schedule for the final season of HBO’s massive hit show Veep in the immediate aftermath of finding out she had cancer. After getting the diagnosis in September 2017, Louis-Dreyfus initially proposed filming Veep‘s final season while she was going through chemotherapy. “For a couple of days — not knowing this road I was about to walk down, not fully understanding, and possibly in a sort of state of denial, too — I was thinking, ‘Well, we’ll shoot around chemo. We’ll figure it out,'” Louis-Dreyfus told Entertainment Weekly in a new interview. “I had that idea, which is, of course, absurd. But I didn’t think of it as such until reality came crashing in.”
Read More In September 2017, Louis-Dreyfus went public with her breast cancer diagnosis in an effort to bring awareness to the need for healthcare that’s accessable for all Americans. Even though her initial instinct was to continue working on
Veep while she was undergoing cancer treatment, she eventually accepted the reality that she would need to take some time off. It’s a reality a lot of survivors need to deal with. However, many members of the SurvivorNet family have told us that continuing to
work during treatment, even if it was in a reduced capacity, really helped with the mental aspects of going through cancer treatment. For patients undergoing chemotherapy, side effects can be really hard to deal with — a lot of survivors say work is a welcome distraction. When talking about
how chemotherapy affects people going through breast cancer treatment Dr. Marleen Meyers, of NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center, said in many cases, it’s possible to go on living with relatively little interruption. “You don’t have to hibernate; you don’t have to hide at home,” Dr. Meyers said. “Many people can continue to work. We talk about healthful eating … we refer our patients to a nutritionist if needed. We also look at what side effects they may have from therapy, and they can include things like hot flashes, night sweats, difficultly sleeping … there’s a whole host of things.” Dr. Meyers also said that there are many things doctors can do to help elevate these side effects, like recommend integrative methods or lifestyle changes. In Louis-Dreyfus’ case, she took some time off to undergo chemotherapy and surgery for breast cancer — though she did participate in table reads with the cast while she was going through treatment. The reads would be scheduled on the days before treatment because she was at her strongest then, according to EW. She officially returned to the set to begin filming the final season in August 2018.
Now, the seventh and final season is wrapped and set to premiere on March 31. Show-runners told Entertainment Weekly that this season may just be the best one yet, and despite the cancer diagnosis, Louis-Dreyfus plays Selina Meyer with just as much spunk and vitality as she always has.
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