EastEnders legend Samantha Womack opens up about her breast cancer journey

Sam opened up about her cancer journey (Picture: Michelle George)

After undergoing surgery and receiving extensive treatment for breast cancer, Samantha Womack revealed last year that she was cancer free, and has now spoken in depth about her journey and experience in an interview with Metro.co.uk.

Sam, who is perhaps best known among soap fans for her role as Ronnie Mitchell in EastEnders, has openly discussed the ‘brutal’ chemotherapy she underwent, her fears following her diagnosis, and how her life has changed since.

The actress bravely used her platform to share her journey as she went through it, explaining to us that the invaluable support she received by talking to other women kept her strong, but also allowed her an understanding space to cry if she wanted to.

While focused on becoming her old self again, Sam has also chosen to back a revolutionary breast cancer diagnostic tool called Digistain, which can inform oncologists on whether chemotherapy is needed for each patient within an hour of testing.

It’s something that she believes could both save patients a lot of unnecessary pain, and also save the NHS money if rolled out.

In our conversation, Sam explained this concept and reflected on what it would have meant for her personally during her journey.

She also told us about re-gaining control, returning to work and the physical and emotional challenges she has overcome throughout.

You have been very open about your journey, which has inevitably helped others feel they are not alone – do you think that is one of the most important feelings to have during such a difficult time?

I do. I had a real change of heart about it, because initially, when I was diagnosed – I think people that are diagnosed will understand this – I immediately felt a sense of shame and secrecy. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the fear of looking vulnerable, or not being employed!

Sam was playing the White Witch in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when she received her diagnosis (Picture: Seamus Ryan)

I was in the middle of working in the West End when I got the diagnosis, and I shared it with my partner and my very close family and friends, but initially, I wanted to keep it quiet.

At first, I was struggling with the diagnosis, then that became slightly more normal. Then you struggle with the surgery and the more medical aspect of the diagnosis.

What I was learning throughout the journey was that, because you’re part of a medical journey, all of your conversations are about that. But there’s a kind of emotional journey that you’re also on where you just feel very alone and alienated.

At the time, Olivia Newton John, who I’d worked with, had suddenly sadly passed away and lost her battle to breast cancer. I’d been around her and hung out with her at the very beginning of her diagnosis. And so, my daughter told me about it and I thought, ‘Wow, she’s at the end of her journey and I’m at the beginning.’ So, I said to Lili that evening, ‘I think I want to share this. I think I want to reach out.’

Before I second-guessed myself, I put it out on Instagram. When I woke up in the morning, I was actually dreading it, thinking, “Oh god, why did you do that?”

But actually, rather than look at how it had been reported in the media, I just went straight onto the personal messages. I was inundated with women – and men actually, who are also diagnosed with breast cancer – with so many stories. I just was blown away. And I really needed it. I genuinely believe that was the moment I started to feel less alone.

I just thought, ‘This is really important now.’ I need to share it because that’s what we should do when we’re struggling. We should reach out and try and help as many people as possible, because you get that help back yourself.

Did the support you got from opening up spur you on to continue talking about it?

So much. So many similar things are being said. Women particularly talking about the loss of femininity, the loss of control. Breast cancer is a strange thing for women because psychologically women covet that part of their body in different ways. You covet it because that’s where you give life, and you breastfeed.

But it’s also a private part of your body which is incredibly sensitive and private, and suddenly there’s an invasion of that and that feels very much like an invasion of your femininity and an invasion of your control.

It’s kind of barbaric a lot of the treatments you have to go through and you want to be stoic and strong. Especially in that beautiful way that women do, you think of other people first; if you’re a mother you want to protect your kids, you don’t want to upset your partner.

It was like suddenly speaking to women and going, ‘god, I just feel so ugly,’ or ‘I don’t feel like I can cry because if I cry I’m going to upset everyone.’ It was such a huge platform of invaluable advice.

They were the things I was worried about more than the statistics. I wanted emotional support more than anything at that point, but I didn’t feel comfortable offloading it onto people.

You have also been very open about how arduous chemotherapy is to endure. How would you describe such a difficult experience?

It’s quite terrifying at the beginning. It’s important to mention that when it’s needed it’s still an incredibly powerful and potent drug and does an amazing job. But when you’re teetering between grades, meaning how aggressive the cancer is, you can sometimes sit, as I did, on a very fine line as to whether it’s needed or not.

And it’s such a brutal treatment to have, because it’s poison, and you understand that as it’s going into your veins, and you feel it very strongly.

After my second round, I could feel this panic that something was very wrong. And maybe that’s because at that point my cancer hadn’t developed so far that I was relying on it. It was a prevention for me. So, I stopped, because I could feel my body was starting to do strange things.

And that’s really important. The information that I had in order to make that decision was vital.

I knew that a test was available that would take a little piece of my tumour and look at it in a very specific way, and give me exactly the information that I needed to make the decision about whether I wanted chemo or not. Without that information, you just don’t know. It’s a very general status that you get.

But the way it exists at the moment is it can be given by the NHS but only with really specific criteria, and I didn’t qualify for that. So I’d already spent quite a lot of money on taking the tumour out.

But then I wanted to understand whether I needed chemo or not, because I knew how harsh it was. So, I had to send off to America, and then you have this agonising wait of anywhere from three to six weeks. And it’s a hell of a lot of money.

And so, I was really passionate about the Digistain project because I think we need to have these tests fully available on the NHS, in the hospitals, where your tumour is. It doesn’t have to go anywhere, they literally take it, put it on a slide and into a machine that has artificial intelligence.

It looks very specifically at your individual cancer and then it tells you what your risk factor is of whether you need the treatment or not.

I just think, when chemotherapy is so expensive for the NHS – they have to spend something like £80,000 per person – surely you’d want to save the people who don’t need it.

Sam is backing Digistain after her experience waiting for results (Picture: Michelle George)

My oncologist, Professor Stephen Johnson, was really championing this testing – which was called Oncotype testing initially – to go to America, because he understood how valuable that information was. But now I’m finding out about Digistain which means that you can do it right here, immediately. Within a day you get your results back.

The savings to the NHS must be a very important factor, especially right now that it is under such strain?

My step-father was a GP – he’s just retired – and spent his whole life advocating for the NHS. In my family, we’ve been on marches, we’ve been supporting the nurses and doctors, hoping that they get paid properly. I’m a massive fan of the NHS and want it to run successfully.

My support for Digistain is about helping the NHS and hopefully reducing the cost of a one size fits all treatment, which was all we had at the time.

Medicine for cancer is really moving forward in a different direction. There’s individual treatments which are far more successful because you’re not weakening the immune system. All the immunotherapies are about boosting the immune system, so you don’t want to poison your immune system if you don’t need to.

You’ve been open about going private for some of your treatment. Which parts of your journey did you take privately and under the NHS and what was that experience like?

It literally took all my savings to have the surgery, which I wanted to do very quickly, because it was quite aggressive. The longer it stayed in my body it was like a ticking time bomb, and because I think the statistics are something like 55,000 people every year in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer, it’s not like you can just get an operation in a week or two.

And I was working, so I needed to control when I did it, because I didn’t want to lose money and not be able to provide for my family. I panicked, and just took a lot of my savings and had the surgery.

I then paid for this very expensive Oncotype test. Then I crossed over to the NHS for the radiotherapy, the chemotherapy and the drugs.

That’s a journey that I’ve been on with The Royal Marsden and Professor Stephen Johnson has been incredible. He understands first-hand that this specific information that you get is so important in not overprescribing chemotherapy where it’s not needed.

When you were given the news that you had the all-clear, how overwhelming was it?

Sam played Ronnie Mitchell in EastEnders between 2007 and 2017 (Picture: BBC/Kieron McCarron)

We all like to use different terminology, and all-clear is a wonderful thing meaning the tumour is gone and there’s no evidence of the cancer at the moment. But what that means is there’s no evidence of tumours at the moment.

At the moment I’m okay, but I also am a realist and know that statistically my chances of recurrence are higher than someone that hasn’t had cancer before, because we all have cancer cells in our body, it’s just about whether your immune system can fight them off or not.

It changes your perspective, and it’s changed my outlook on certain things. That’s the gift that an illness can give you sometimes. It’s like the sunglasses are taken off and you suddenly get to see things really vividly.

I don’t have any more tumours at the moment, I’m clear in that respect, but I’m still incredibly cautious about getting my check-ups every year. But also trying not to spend my life waiting to see if it’s around the corner.

That’s the most complicated thing with cancer, is trying to put it in a place where you’re responsible about it but you’re also not letting it breathe down your neck every second of every day.

Are you keen to get across the importance of getting checked, especially among younger people in their 20s who may not be aware that they are at risk?

The Triple-A Negative cancer tends to be in older women, and I hadn’t realised that the Hormone Receptor Positive cancer, which I have, was actually really prevalent in younger women because of hormone imbalance.

We’re living in a time where hormonal imbalance is pretty standard and so I couldn’t believe that 40% of the messages I was getting were from women who were 19, 20, 23 saying, ‘I had no idea that I had to check my breasts.’ And so, in the same way that we push for cervical cancer screening, I would love for women to know that that is a real threat that’s out there.

Do you think your priorities have changed since going through this journey?

I’m still figuring it out so it’s hard because it changes. Initially, the primary voice in your head is the loudest, saying, ‘Am I going to live or am I going to die?’ Then when that gets a little bit quieter it’s more profound. It’s almost like, ‘If I were to get it again, what does life mean to me? What do I want to do now? How do I want to let this change me for the better?’

Sam has been very open about her breast cancer journey (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)

I’ve worked out that I got the diagnosis and I just kept going. ‘Well, I mustn’t let anyone down. I’m going to be Superwoman and I’m not going to complain and everyone’s going to say to me, “‘Gosh aren’t you a brilliant cancer patient!’” And somehow, I don’t know, that’s what I wanted. I don’t know if it’s like cancer ego, I don’t know what the hell it was!

But actually, what I needed was space and time, and eventually, there were circumstances that pushed me to that. I lost my dog at the same time. It sounds silly but that was the thing that kind of pulled the rug from under my feet.

It enforced rest for me, because I just psychologically had a bit of a meltdown after that. It was all in the same couple of weeks.

Reflection and nature has become incredibly important to me now. A bit like the kind of vibe we had in the pandemic. Although it was a horrible, deadly virus, we all learnt things about ourselves with that space and time.

It’s almost like I really needed that to deal with this diagnosis. I couldn’t process it by running around, going to Lidl, going to work, going to wherever. I really needed nature.

Do you think it’s important to have people to talk to who understand what you’re going through when you’re on a journey like this?

Yes, because it’s the little intricacies of the diagnosis that become the biggest problems. You kind of go, ‘Oh, it’s the tumour, then it’s the operation, then it’s the chemo, then it’s the radio.’ But what you don’t realise is how you’ve lost a sense of control, and how that destabilises you. And how you manage the really complicated little things.

Feeling confident about your body again and not feeling like something has taken it from you.

Trying not to be vain about the changes that happen constantly to you – first to your breasts, then to your skin, then to your hair – to varying degrees for different women. But they’re all terrifying. They’re the things that become the hardest to overcome.

Has this experience changed the way you go about work as an actress? Has it affected the types of roles or the amount of work you pick up?

I would love to be able to say that I can pick and choose! I was tempted to believe it myself, but the truth is there is so little work, that unless it’s absolutely awful [Laughs], I’ll pretty much do it! If it’s not offensive.

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It’s made me more reflective and kind of spiritual. So actually, I’m looking at a lot of European film and a lot of documentaries. I’m more fascinated by messaging. I’m less about the sensational and more about responsible messaging, I suppose. If it was a perfect world and I had the choice, I’d be doing stuff like that.

But you’ll probably see me doing a panto next year and that gets thrown out of the water!

How are you feeling now in yourself?

I’m still a bit tired. Physically I’m really well, but my brain is a bit tired. Sometimes so much thinking hurts.

I’m going back to work in July and it’s going to be a really pleasing distraction, because you can only think about yourself for so long, without going mad! So, I’m looking forward to just focusing on my work and going back to my old self, rather than being so existential. The existentialism has been driving me crazy!

Is it 42nd Street the Musical you’re doing next?

It is! It was my grandma’s favourite show, bless her. She was a choreographer and she always said, ‘Why can’t you get into a proper show like 42nd Street?’ So I’m like, ‘Well, I’m in a proper show now!’ So, yes, I’m doing that.

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EastEnders actress Sam Womack on the brutality of her breast cancer journey, new treatment and her return to work.