Names and faces
■ Shannen Doherty is battling a recurrence of breast cancer that has progressed to stage four, telling fans “it’s a bitter pill to swallow.” “I definitely have days where I say, ‘Why me?’ And then I go, ‘Well, why not me? Who else? Who else besides me deserves this?’ None of us do,” Doherty told Good Morning America on Tuesday. “I don’t think I’ve processed it. It’s a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways.” Doherty, 48, has been working on the show BH90210 and kept the diagnosis mostly secret. “People with stage four can work, too. Our life doesn’t end the minute we get that diagnosis. We still have some living to do,” she said. The actress from Charmed and Beverly Hills, 90210 first revealed she had breast cancer in 2015 and charted her battle with the disease and its remission on social media. She said one reason she came forward to say it has returned is because her health condition could come out in court in a lawsuit the actress filed against insurance giant State Farm for losses after her California home was damaged in a fire in 2018. “I’d rather people hear it from me. I don’t want it to be twisted. I don’t want it to be a court document. I want it to be real and authentic,” Doherty said. “I want people to know from me, I just didn’t want them to know yet.”
■ Jane Fonda had a scheduling problem, the collision of two important parts of a very busy life. The Oscar-winning actress (Klute, Coming Home) had moved from Los Angeles to Washington in September, intent on a mission to raise awareness of climate change. Fonda, 82, protested on the U.S. Capitol grounds and was arrested five times. However, she was under contract for the seventh and final season of her comedy series, Grace and Frankie. Being half of the title, she couldn’t just bail. She said that when she asked for a hiatus in filming, Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, “looked at me like I was crazy.” While her four months of weekly protests in Washington, called Fire Drill Fridays, ended in January, they “had been transformative,” Fonda said in a talk to about 150 people Saturday in West Hollywood. Fonda said starting Friday, she will kick off the California version of Fire Drill Fridays with a rally on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall. But she has no plans to get arrested. Her lawyer negotiated a deal to offset the conflict between Grace and Frankie and court dates in Washington: She can continue filming in California if she does not engage in civil disobedience for 90 days — which ends in April. At which time, she said, she plans to hold out her wrists for zip-tie handcuffs yet again.