How ‘Melrose Place’ star Jillian Barberie battled cancer, addiction and how Heather Locklear helped

After battling breast cancer and addiction, television host and actress Jillian Barberie recently spoke about traumas she has been through, the help she got from fellow star Heather Locklear, and what “will be the death of [her].”

At 56 years old, Barberie has had a lengthy career in the spotlight as a co-host of “Good Day L.A.” for nearly 20 years along with stints on other programs including the 1990s prime-time television soap opera “Melrose Place.” In 2018 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, she explained how Locklear “helped…a lot through chemo” and how “everything’s relative.”

“I really don’t feel like I’ve had a lot of trauma in my life, which is hysterical because I always ask my girlfriends, ‘Have [I] been through a lot?'” she explained adding, “They will look at me, and they will seriously say to me, ‘Yes Jillian, you’ve been through a lot.’ But I think everything’s relative.”

Regarding her cancer diagnosis, Barberie detailed, “I did have the double mastectomy, the chemo, the radiation,” before later stating, “Heather is one of my very dear friends and she helped me a lot through chemo.”

“She says I helped her through, you know, her sobriety and, you know, now we talk every day,” the cancer survivor said of her friend who underwent court-mandated rehab in 2019. “And I see her most days of the week.”

“We are very fortunate. We always say we’re the same person. We have the same sense of humor, and we cover in the same crazy business so we kind of get it and she doesn’t take herself too seriously at all,” Barberie noted. “She’s one of the funniest women I’ve ever met. And we’re raunchy.”

Speaking of her own sobriety, she relayed how she viewed it as far more dangerous to her well-being than cancer ever was. “It’s been 14 months. I can’t imagine going through the things that I’ve gone through being drunk in the past year. I’ve been through enough. I mean, I think that drinking, you know, for me, will be the death of me, cancer won’t.”

 

 

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A post shared by Jillian Barberie (@askjillian)

The single mother of two children, daughter Ruby, 15, and son Rocco, 12, went on to say, “I always tell people, you know, for me that taking a sip of alcohol is far more dangerous than my cancer coming back.”

“For me, I am far more afraid of taking a sip of Chardonnay than I am, of hearing that my cancer comes back. And the reason for that is very simple. If cancer does come back, you have doctors, they’re the professionals, the experts that, you know, surgical oncologists take it out of you,” the actress said. “And then chemo oncologists tell you exactly how much chemo they must put in your body. When you’re drinking, you’re the doctor, right?”

While expressing positivity about where she has found herself in life, Barberie did imply that hers was a cautionary tale when she told the Daily Mail, “I wasn’t one of those women that looked at my body as this big sacred thing. I didn’t treat my body horribly, but I didn’t think of breast cancer. I just never really had mammograms. It just never occurred to me.”

 

 

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A post shared by Jillian Barberie (@askjillian)

“And…I took my body for granted,” she continued and said “for posterity” she wished she had agreed to appear in Playboy Magazine as her implants simply aren’t the same. “Playboy offered four times, and I turned them down every time and I wish I had done it. But, you know, God had different plans for me.”

Now she uses her experiences to help others overcome their challenges, even sharing memories on social media from nights that she could not remember.

“Yes, I’ve gone through a lot. But you know, I am certainly not traumatized from these traumatic events,” she declared. “I’ve grown and I’ve learned, and I try to help people whether it’s addiction, anything else that I’ve been through. And that’s the greatest gift of all.”

Her positive message was well received as readers reacted:

Kevin Haggerty

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