E-mail a friendJessica Queller
airdate April 18, 2008
Jessica Queller didn't always aspire to be a writer. She acted in her first Off-Broadway play at age 15 and, at age 28, moved to L.A. to pursue TV and film. Two years later, she segued from actor to TV drama writer and has amassed credits that include Felicity, The Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl—which she also co-produces. At age 34, Queller tested positive for the breast cancer gene and, since, has turned a New York Times Op-Ed piece into an inspiring memoir, Pretty Is What Changes.
Author explains why she decided to have a double mastectomy at age 35. (4:53)
Jessica Queller
Tavis: Jessica Queller is a writer and producer based here in Los Angeles who's worked on some popular shows like "The Gilmore Girls," "Felicity," and currently the hit CW series, "Gossip Girl." She's also the author of an acclaimed new book, "Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, The Breast Cancer Gene and How I Defied My Destiny." Jessica, nice to have you on the program.
Jessica Queller: Thank you. So nice to be here.
Tavis: It's nice to have you here, particularly around a subject matter that is so prevalent. She may be watching now, so she knows this. There's a young woman who I've been very, very close to for a long time. Her name is Sheryl and she happens to be the executive producer of my radio program. Every night at the close of this show, I talk about my public radio program in addition to this PBS program. Sheryl is battling breast cancer as we speak.
Queller: Sorry.
Tavis: So to have this book out now which I'm happy to give to her when I get back to my office tomorrow. But I say prevalent because when I learned from Sheryl that she had breast cancer and, at a certain point, she had to tell the people in our company and her friends that she had it, she was taken aback, and I was taken aback at all of the stories from people that were around here even that came back to her of how they had battled this, many of them courageously, and had survived it.
It was like amazing for me to discover the women in my space, on the lot here, at this studio and in other parts of my world that I didn't even know had gone through this. This thing is really, really very prevalent.
Queller: It's scary. It's like an epidemic. I've not gone anywhere - wherever I go, I tell someone I just wrote a book and they ask me what it was about and I say, "Well, breast cancer and genetics" and there is not one person who is not connected to breast cancer, one degree away, a mother, a sister, themselves, a best friend. It's scary. It's everywhere.
Tavis: Let me stand down for a second, and I could ask you a series of questions. I don't want to do that. You can tell the story better. You're a writer, so you know how to tell the story yourself. Tell me the story of you and your mother, which is the center of this essentially.
Queller: Yes. Well, my mom was a beautiful, glamorous fashion designer. The line I always say is that "My mother was wearing Manolo Blahniks when Sarah Jessica Parker was still in diapers." (Laughter) It's true. She was a fashion designer in Manhattan and she was a dead ringer for Jacqueline Bissett. She was fit and she ran six miles a day and she found out that she had breast cancer at age fifty-two and was absolutely shocked. Out of nowhere. Then she beat it.
She had, you know, quite advanced breast cancer, but she lost her hair, she did intense chemotherapy, she went to work every day and she was able to beat the cancer. Six years later, she found out that she had a second primary cancer, ovarian cancer, supposedly totally unrelated. This time, she died. She died within two years. It was the most horrific thing I hope to ever experience in my life.
A year after she died, I took a genetic test for what's commonly known as the breast cancer gene, the BRCA mutation, and tested positive, which means that I had up to an eighty-seven percent chance of getting breast cancer and a forty-four percent chance of getting ovarian cancer. Only when I learned about the test did I find out that the breast and ovarian cancers were connected. There was this genetic mutation that my mom carried and we didn't know that she had it.
Tavis: How does a woman who is single, never married, no kids, like my friend Sheryl, how does a woman deal with that when you get that kind of news?
Queller: It's not fun, it's not pleasant. In my case, knock wood, thank goodness, I didn't have cancer. I just was told that statistically I was assured of getting cancer. The other thing about the BRCA mutation is that it's known as an early onset disease, so most likely you'll get breast cancer before the age of fifty.
I was thirty-four when I tested positive. So it took me a year of research and obsessing and soul-searching to decide to have a preventative double mastectomy. So I went through with that surgery at the age of thirty-five.
Tavis: Tell me - and you talk about it in the book very courageously, and it's tough for me to even ask these questions without getting choked up, given what those of us who love Sheryl are going through right now. But how do you at that age decide that this is the right decision, again, on this side of marriage, on this side of babies?
Queller: Right.
Tavis: How do you make that decision at thirty-five?
Queller: Well, for me, it was bearing witness to what happened to my mother.
Tavis: Right.
Queller: I saw the disease at its worst. It was something out of nightmares. I don't think I ever could have made the decision that I made had I not witnessed my mother's illness and death from cancer. After what I experienced, for me, cancer was the worst thing in the world. I just wanted to avoid it all costs and, after a year of soul-searching, I felt that having the surgery was sort of the lesser of two evils for me.
Tavis: The lesser of two evils, and yet as I read the text, read your book, a woman, you, any woman, at some point has to figure out how to - everybody has a different journey, of course - but you have to essentially find a way to - for lack of a better word - disconnect yourself from these breasts, disconnect yourself from these body parts, because you got to make a decision that living is more important than having these. But for a woman, I can only imagine that's not an easy decision to come to.
Queller: No. It was devastating. The good news is that the worst part was the fear in advance. I was afraid that I would feel deformed afterwards. I was afraid that I would never feel comfortable in my body again, that I wouldn't feel attractive. Thankfully, none of those things were true.
Plastic surgery is so advanced now that they put you back together again really quite beautifully, so, you know, I think a lot of us have some idea of mastectomy, the stigma of it, from our mother's generation and our grandmother's generation, and it's not like that anymore. I mean, it's not that bad. It's not as bad as cancer. Again, that's just my experience.
Tavis: Because you experienced it.
Queller: Yes.
Tavis: You have a sister?
Queller: I have a younger sister.
Tavis: And has she tested as yet?
Queller: She swore that she'd never take the test because she swore she'd never do the surgery, so she didn't want to know. And then she went through it with me and saw it wasn't that bad and then she had a baby and she felt a different responsibility to staying healthy, so she just changed her mind and she did take the test. She didn't tell me or her husband or our father. She did it secretly because she didn't want us to pressure her. She tested positive and then she subsequently had the surgery as well.
Tavis: So you and your sister?
Queller: Yeah.
Tavis: Wow. How much, to your point about your sister, how much do you think women not getting tested has to do with your sister's formulation on just not wanting to know?
Queller: Huge, hugely. Who wants to know? Who wants to deal with something like this when you're healthy and in the prime of your life and you don't have an illness? You know, it's very difficult to check yourself into the hospital and elect to have this kind of frightening surgery when you don't have to. There's no doctor saying you must do it. So it was a very intense decision, but I've never regretted it.
Tavis: What do you hope for when you find the courage and the conviction and the commitment to something that allows you to write a book like this very courageously? What do you hope for there to come out of a sharing like this?
Queller: I hope that women who are at high risk, who have the instinct to get the knowledge and find out if they have this genetic issue, I hope that I will inspire them not to be afraid. I hope that I will, you know, help them to realize that it's really not that bad, that there is life afterwards. Really, most significantly, I share my mother's story in the book and the horrible suffering that she went through and I hope that can, in some way, spare other women of that suffering.
Tavis: I want to put up on the screen now - this is on our Website, all this information, but I recognize that not everybody even in 2008, not everybody has access to a computer, certainly not at this very second. So let me put up on the screen as I close this conversation some information that you should have about who should take these tests. You see the stuff on your screen there, who should take the tests.
You who are below age fifty; your mother, sister or daughter had breast cancer before age fifty; a woman in your family has had both breast and ovarian cancer; a woman in your family had cancer in both breasts; your family is of - how do you pronounce this word?
Queller: Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
Tavis: Ashkenazi. Didn't want to mess that up. Ashkenazi. Learned a new word today. Ashkenazi Jewish descent; there is male breast cancer in your family. And, of course, information also on the Website about where to find the test or a genetic counselor as well. So a lot of good information on our Website about what Jessica shares in this book.
Of course, if TV is worth anything these days, it is about empowering people with information. I believe information is power. Knowledge is power and I hope that you'll be empowered not just by the conversation, but indeed by the stuff on the Website and, most importantly, by Jessica's book.
The new book by Jessica Queller is called "Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene and How I Defied My Destiny." Jessica, I am so delighted that you defied your destiny and you came to see us.
Queller: Thank you so much.
Tavis: It's a pleasure to meet you.
Queller: It's a real pleasure.
Tavis: Glad to have you on the program.
Queller: Thank you.
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