Industry’s Marisa Abela is sharing an update on her health after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer at age 23.
“I’m all in the clear now, thank God,” the British actress, now 29, said in an interview with The Sunday Times published on Sunday, January 4, though she noted that she will need to take medication for the first of her life.
“I don’t have a working thyroid so these pills sort of create one,” she explained. “I’m never going to miss those appointments. The thyroid is all to do with your hormones, and staying on top of your hormones, as a woman, to make sure things are running as they should, is important.”
Abela was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2020. At the time, she underwent an eight-hour surgery and radioactive iodine treatment. According to the Mayo Clinic, the treatment involves ingesting a capsule or liquid form of iodine that kills cancerous thyroid cells that may still remain after surgery.
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“It is mental. A sort of nuclear physicist in an astronaut suit gives you this box and you unscrew the box and tip it up and this pulsating neon tablet goes into you — like something from the opening of The Simpsons,” Abela recalled in an October 2024 interview with The Times of London. “And then this man, standing on the other side of the room, points a sort of gun thing at you to see how nuclear you are and it goes like, ‘Bbbbrrrrrrr’ and he’s like, ‘Yup, good to go,’ and he runs out of the room. And you’re just left there thinking, ‘This is in my body. How has someone just given this to me?’”
After returning home from the hospital, Abela said she struggled with the toll the treatment had taken on her body and feared that it would impact her acting career.
“When I first went to the bathroom after surgery and I saw myself in the mirror, I thought, ‘That’s it, my career is over,’ because [my neck] was stapled, bloody,” Abela said. “It wasn’t pretty at all and the scar is big. [I couldn’t] imagine ever playing a character where her description isn’t, ‘And she has this big scar on her neck.’”
“There’s a distrust within your body that I really wouldn’t wish on anyone,” Abela added of her health scare. “This thing existed inside me for years without me knowing it was there — and that has changed my relationship with my body. I’m really not an ‘everything happens for a reason’ kind of person, and I don’t think that should happen to anyone, but I think that it does mean that you have a real perspective on what is important and what’s not.”
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Abela is now in remission and married her longtime partner, actor Jamie Bogyo, in September 2025, with many of her Industry castmates present. Costar Myha’la was one of her bridesmaids.
The actress told The Sunday Times that the wedding ceremony was “amazing and a big party. Very booze-focused.”
She added, “Jamie and I went to bed at about 4 a.m., we were sensible. There was an afterparty, but I’m glad we didn’t go. The next day was so special and I’m glad that I didn’t feel like death and could remember everything.”
