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RELATED LINKS

• Ms. Carroll's official site
• About The Legs Are the Last to Go
• Ms. Queller's official site
• About Pretty is What Changes: Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny

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Ms. Carroll discusses why breast cancer is so much more deadly for African American women. (2:52)
 

Full interview. (16:04)
 

Tavis: As we continue our look at the issue of breast cancer, I am pleased to be joined by two courageous women whose lives have been very much impacted by the disease. Jessica Queller is an accomplished TV writer whose critically acclaimed memoir is now out in paperback. The book is called Pretty is What Changes: A Memoir.

And Diahann Carroll, of course, the legendary singer, actress and recording artist who has been a breast cancer survivor for more than ten years now. If you have not picked up a copy of her terrific memoir, it's called The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way and, as Jonathan puts the camera on her legs, you will see why.

Diahann Carroll: (Laughter) Am I a little obvious?

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughter) The Legs Are the Last to Go. I love the book and I love Diahann Carroll. Jessica, nice to see you.

Jessica Queller: It's wonderful to see you.

Tavis: And Diahann Carroll, nice to see you.

Carroll: Always.

Tavis: And when I say, "Nice to see you," I say that a lot on the show and I see people who are friends come back. I say, "Nice to see you," but in your case, I really mean that.

The last time you were on this show, we started out talking about our beloved friend, Sheryl Flowers, my executive producer. I wouldn't be on PBS now were it not for her. She produced my radio show on NPR for years and it was the success of that radio program that made this TV show now in its sixth season possible.

When we last talked on this program, I was telling you about Sheryl's battle then. She fought that battle and she lost it, so we have committed - all of us. Not just me, but all of my entire staff, Sheryl's radio and TV family - we've committed ourselves for the rest of our lives to use this platform as often as we can to talk about this particular issue.

So here you are back again and when I say, "I'm glad to see you," I mean I'm glad to see you. That means something different to me.

Carroll: Thank you. I'm glad to be here and I love you for doing this for Sheryl. For some reason, we go through little periods of time where we're all dedicated and devoted to raising money and having research and then it disappears, but we have to have more reasons for bringing this to the floor as often as possible.

Tavis: How much did it scare you when you were diagnosed?

Carroll: There are no words. It brought me to my knees, you know, as soon as I heard it. I think, oh, about 48 hours later, I accepted that it was a proper diagnosis. But we have associated with that word "cancer" a word that comes to mind immediately and that's death. So how does one handle the fact that this might mean the end for me? You can't handle that immediately. It takes a while.

Tavis: What do you make of the fact that, for ten years living, ten years running now, you're still here?

Carroll: I'm lucky. That's the first thing. The other thing is I like the fact that I am a part of an industry that insists that every job you must have a complete physical, so that became a part of my life very early. Recognizing that it was part of my responsibility to myself as well the producers that I worked for, so every year, every year, I have the mammogram.

I think early detection is the most important thing we could talk about. I wonder always when I hear about a very quick death, if there had been earlier information that this person had about themselves, if it would have made a difference. In my case, I think it was very important.

Tavis: And yet you had friends - you and I discussed this, so I happen to know this - you had friends or certainly people in your circle, people who had access to you, who warned you against going public about your breast cancer because it might harm your career.

Carroll: Yes. A lot of people, the names I can't really tell you because some of them are walking around as time bombs themselves. They realize that they have cancer. But what their decision was, particularly the women said this to me, is that the industry has a very high standard of make-believe connected to women and that it's important that you do not have the stigma of anything that is unhealthy or maybe unattractive.

I toyed with that for a while and I thought that's not going to work for me. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who asked me to come to my own honest conclusion, which was to share it, so I did so.

Tavis: When you sat down in that chair and you met Jessica for the first time, you said to her how amazing her story was when you heard it and it is. I can't even do justice to it. I mean, the wonderful book she has out, Pretty is What Changes, tells the story now out in paperback. But Jessica didn't actually have breast cancer.

I'll let you pick up on why you're sitting on this couch tonight as part of this show because your story is so fascinating, so I'll let you tell it.

Queller: Okay. Well, my mother was an extraordinary, extraordinary woman and she was blindsided by breast cancer at the age of 52. It was quite brutal, but she fought with every fiber of her being and she was able to beat the cancer.

Six years later, she was struck with another primary cancer, this time ovarian cancer, and again she fought and her will to live was just formidable, but this time the cancer was too strong and she died at the age of 60. My sister and I and our father bore witness to this just unimaginable horror and suffering and I'm still haunted by it daily.

A year after her death, I took a blood test for what's commonly known as the breast cancer gene and was stunned to find out that I inherited this genetic mutation that my mom had carried. We didn't even know that she had it at the time. She didn't know such a thing existed in her lifetime.

So the test results told me that I had up to a 90% chance of breast cancer most likely before the age of 50. I was 34 at the time when I took the test and I spent a year soul-searching and researching a speaking to doctors around the country and trying to figure out what to do.

I was told that the gold standard for preventing breast cancer was prophylactic double mastectomy and reconstruction. Although I was cancer-free, I was statistically assured of getting cancer most likely young and most likely a very virulent strain.

Carroll: That's probably even more difficult to accept, that you have to make that decision because you did not have cancer.

Queller: That's right, and you're healthy and, you know, no one is telling you that you have to go in for the surgery. But I was so traumatized and really affected to my soul by this cancer that I decided, you know, I don't want to risk this. I don't want to gamble with it.

Tavis: So you have the surgery?

Queller: So I have the surgery and I'm fine and I'm so grateful for it. I had advance warning and I feel so lucky that I had that advance warning. After the surgery, the pathology report showed pre-cancerous changes in one of my breasts, so I was en route most likely.

Carroll: Also, for the mothers that are hearing this, because this information about this is relatively new -

Queller: - it is.

Carroll: So we should make sure that our daughters - I hadn't thought of that - have this information.

Tavis: And speaking of daughters having that information, Jessica says she's fine. She's more than fine. All right, Jonathan. Zoom in on this. Do you see this?

Queller: (Laughter) I'm pregnant.

Tavis: There you go. Back out. There you go. Yeah, yeah (laughter).

Carroll: Bravo!!

Tavis: Six months, are you?

Queller: And it's a girl (laughter).

Tavis: And it's a girl. That was my segue when Diahann Carroll said we got to tell our daughters. Jessica is going to tell her daughter for sure. Let me ask you on that. I'm sure you've been asked this by your friends, of course, whether or not there's fear, trepidation about -

Queller: - absolutely. There's a lot of fear about passing this gene on and there's a lot of controversy about it and I've been very criticized publicly by people who think it's unethical to have a child when you carry this kind of mutation. You know, all I can say is -

Carroll: - oh, there's always so many negative people.

Queller: I know.

Carroll: This is something that's important for you to do.

Queller: Thank you.

Carroll: Yes, and if you find that, you know, this is true, you will be able to, at an early age, tackle this thing.

Queller: And it really doesn't come into play until a woman is in her twenties, mid-twenties really, and my doctors have assured me that the scientific advances are moving forward. Twenty-five years from now, God willing, it will be a different climate, there will be different choices.

Tavis: I'm glad to hear that about the research. That's one of the things we want to do is to make sure that we all understand, you know, that we have got to eradicate not just breast cancer, but all these various forms of cancer that are killing people every day in this country and indeed around the world.

I was saying to somebody the other day that, whenever I hear that somebody has passed away, I mean, the first thing I think is cancer because you hear so often that they died of this kind of cancer or that kind of cancer. So that's why we're doing this show tonight and we'll do more, I promise, as long as I'm on PBS in the coming months and years about this particular issue.

But I was going to ask, to Diahann Carroll's point, Jessica, how it makes you feel and what is your response to people when they say that you are unethical to have gotten pregnant?

Queller: You know, I think that you can never judge someone unless you're walking in their shoes.

Carroll: Absolutely.

Queller: And I think that this is not I lived a wonderful life until age 34 without any impediment. To say that, you know, we're going to continue to discover more genes and more mutations. Everyone's going to have something, a heart proclivity for illness - if you start living your life that way and saying, "I'm not going to have children because I'm afraid the child has a chance of getting ill," then what kind of a world will we have?

Carroll: We're very afraid of change and this is what you're suggesting is that we begin to think about the situation in a different way and that's hard for many of us. But I'm proud of you.

Tavis: Diahann Carroll, were those persons right about the fact that it was going to impact your career, your going public? Have you sensed any retaliation or negativity?

Carroll: I can't say. I cannot say that. Because of the early detection, my health was very good even during the radiation, so I came out of it and went back to my regime of taking care of myself and exercising and all the things that are so boring, but so necessary. I think I've done - you know, I'm really thrilled that I'm working at this age. I've mentioned that to you before. But, no, I can say that it was handled with grace.

Tavis: I mentioned earlier how you responded to Jessica, for those who didn't see this. This was not on television, obviously, so you sat down and you met Jessica and I've listened to you telling her how courageous you thought her story was and I heard Jessica say to you what a role model -

Queller: - she's my hero (laughter).

Tavis: There you go. She said it again. She was telling you how much she has admired you over the years. I come to that, Diahann Carroll, because you have been a role model for so many women. I was about to say Black women. Jessica clearly ain't Black, pardon my English. So you've been a role model to all -

Carroll: - she could be, you know (laughter).

Tavis: Yeah, she could be (laughter). She's an honorary sister on the couch. But you've been a role model to so many women, Black and otherwise. I raise that specifically because you know this better than I do that, if breast cancer is a death sentence for anybody, statistically it is for Black women.

When Black women, women of color, get diagnosed, the evidence is very clear that they end up dying from this much more often than white women do. So your message to Black women specifically is what?

Carroll: Has anyone said why they believe that this is true?

Tavis: I think the evidence that - I've been doing a lot of reading. I'm learning about this because of what happened to Sheryl, what Sheryl went through for the last two years. There are a number of reasons in no particular order. One, which you said earlier, early detection. They don't find out often enough, number one.

Carroll: That's it. Then that's the -

Tavis: - well, that's one thing. Number two, they don't have access to healthcare. We're going through a healthcare debate in this country right now. I hope President Barack Obama is successful at this, but there are too many women of color who don't have access to healthcare. Then as we just talked to the doctor a moment ago, this triple negative cancer is disproportionately impacting African American women. That, we don't know all the answers to yet.

Carroll: Why that happens.

Tavis: Trying to figure out why that triple negative is so egregious on the bodies of African American women.

Carroll: And the first thing that you said about the lack of information is incredibly important. Much of what I found as I travel talking to women about it is fear. Always fear is the thing that will conquer us if we allow it. That's why it's so interesting to travel and to have these discussions because they have some relationship with me.

After 8,000 years in the business, they say, "Oh, I know her, so if she had it. . .", and I feel that's important and I did. I was just surprised. But I think it's really difficult to get this information into the Black community. There is information out there. We can't say it isn't out there.

Tavis: You got to go get it, though.

Carroll: You have to go get it.

Tavis: Jessica, you happy?

Queller: Yes. (Laughter) I'm so happy. I'm so grateful.

Carroll: You look like a pretty pregnant woman, doesn't she?

Queller: Oh, thank you.

Tavis: (Laughter) Yeah, I told her that when she walked on the set.

Queller: I want to take this opportunity to say that my mother loved you and we watched "Dynasty" together and she would be so thrilled to know that I was sitting here with you (laughter).

Carroll: How nice.

Tavis: (Laughter) Dominique Devereaux, yeah.

Queller: It's especially poignant for me that my mother just loved you.

Carroll: Oh, isn't that lovely. I guess those are the perks of working, hearing stories like that.

Queller: It's true.

Tavis: And one of the perks of working is being able to have the kind of integrity and credibility and respect that, when you talk about these kinds of issues, people pay attention and that's why I'm so glad you came to see us.

Carroll: I thank you for inviting me, darling. Any time you invite me to be here, you know that I'll be here.

Tavis: And you always do and I thank you for it. Diahann Carroll, an iconic figure in this institution of Hollywood. Her latest book, The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging - although that's a lie; you ain't aging - but anyway, Acting, Marrying and Other Kinds of Things I Learned Along the Way. That's Diahann Carroll's book. And Jessica Queller expecting her first baby. The new book is called Pretty is What Changes. I want to thank you both for coming on the program.

Carroll: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

Queller: Thank you so much.

Tavis: Thank you. As I mentioned earlier this week here in Los Angeles, we are paying tribute to our longtime producer and abiding friend, Sheryl Flowers, who passed away recently after her battle with breast cancer. We dedicate this program tonight to Sheryl.