William Shatner, 95, and his youngest daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch, 62, have spoken in public for the first time about the months when both of them were fighting stage 4 cancer at the same time. The two appeared together on Thursday, November 12, at the End Well 2026 summit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, in a conversation moderated by actor Yvette Nicole Brown.
William Shatner was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma in 2023, after the disease had spread to his lungs and brain. Gretsch had been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in 2022. Both have since been declared cancer-free, in late 2024, and both used the appearance to talk about how facing death changed the way they live.
William Shatner also shared what he wants to happen after he dies. “I have in my will that there will be a tree over my body,” he said. “And the whole family is doing that.” The remark drew a response from the audience at the conference, which discusses grief and end-of-life care.
William Shatner and Melanie found their cancers days apart
The two diagnoses arrived within days of each other. Gretsch spotted a lump on her father’s cheek in 2022 and urged him to have it checked. The lump turned out to be stage 4 malignant melanoma, which had already spread to his lungs and brain. Shatner then had two years of immunotherapy.
Around the same time, Gretsch received her own diagnosis. She had found a lump in her breast that an initial mammogram had missed, and further scans showed HER2-positive breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes. Her treatment lasted 18 months and included several rounds of chemotherapy, 30 radiation treatments and a double mastectomy without reconstruction.
Gretsch recalled calling her father late one evening after receiving frightening news about her condition. “I’m so scared I’m going to die,” she told him. Shatner said he was “totally devastated by the enormity of the information” when he learned that both of them were seriously ill.
The pair had kept the illness private at the time. They first discussed it in public in a joint interview with People magazine in July 2026, and they have since started a podcast together, “No Time But Now,” which launched in July and features the two interviewing health experts and cancer survivors.
William Shatner on death and the cosmos
At the summit, William Shatner spoke about what he believes happens after death. “My thought is that we are made of the same building blocks that the universe, that the cosmos, is made of,” he said. “That’s where I’m going. I would like to think that I’m going back to the cosmos. I’m rejoining the universe.”
Gretsch spoke about the fear that came with her diagnosis and what it left behind. “Dealing with the fear of death was like life changing in all the best ways,” she said at the summit. “So I consider cancer, so strangely, the biggest blessing of life.”
William Shatner said his daughter’s outlook was one reason he felt fortunate. “What’s festering in all our minds, to one degree or another, is what’s going to happen?” he said. “So, a lot of people that I know are, I would use the word, lucky, and Melanie is one of them [because she] has faith that something good is going to happen.”
William Shatner’s schedule has not slowed. Parade reported that he left the summit with six other engagements the same day and a 3:30 a.m. call the next morning for a 5 a.m. flight to New York, after a week in Scotland and ahead of a trip to Ireland. “That’s one way to deal with death: Keep moving. You can’t hit a moving target,” he said.
William Shatner denied a cancer hoax in April
In April 2026, William Shatner was forced to deny a hoax that claimed he had been diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer. The false claim circulated online while he was already cancer-free, and he addressed it publicly at the time.
William Shatner is best known as Captain James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek television series. He shares three daughters with his first wife, Gloria Rand: Leslie, 68, Lisabeth, 65, and Melanie, the youngest. Gretsch is his youngest child.
The End Well summit brings together doctors, patients and families to discuss dying, grief and care at the end of life. Shatner and Gretsch closed their session by returning to the subject that had brought them there, the months in 2022 and 2023 when father and daughter were both in treatment, and the fact that both of them are still here.