Amanda Peet came to terms with her breast cancer diagnosis by putting pen to paper.
“I didn’t really have a strategy or a plan when I started writing,” Peet, 54, exclusively told Us Weekly at the PaleyFest panel for Apple TV+’s Your Friends & Neighbors on Saturday, April 11, referring to her recent essay in The New Yorker. “It just seemed, like, maybe part of how I was coping with what was happening.”
Peet publicly revealed her health battle in a New Yorker article late last month, confirming that she was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer “last fall.” After undergoing a lumpectomy and radiation as treatment, Peet received a “clear scan.”
“I’m doing great,” she said on Saturday, giving Us an update on her health. “The response [to the essay] was very, very surprising and moving. If I could make anyone feel slightly less alone, that brings me deep joy.”
Amanda Peet Provides Health Update Following Her Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Peet initially revealed last month that she was diagnosed with “hormone-receptor-positive” and “HER2-negative” cancer around the same time both her parents were on hospice care. (Peet’s parents have since died.)
“Our parents, long divorced, were both in hospice, on opposite coasts,” she wrote at the time, also referring to her sister. “Our mother’s had started in June, but our father’s was only a week in, so we hadn’t expected him to go first. I flew to New York. I didn’t make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment.”
Peet subsequently traveled back to Los Angeles to care for her mom, who died in January.
“The morphine was taking forever to kick in, and she was looking at the ceiling and whimpering, so I climbed onto her rented hospital bed to get in her line of vision,” Peet wrote of her final moments with her mother. “We locked eyes and she quieted down, and then she and I continued to stare at each other for what felt like several minutes.”
Amanda Peet Shares How Her 3 Kids Reacted to Her Breast Cancer Diagnosis
After grieving her parents’ deaths, Peet returned to work. She reprised her role as Mel Cooper in Your Friends & Neighbors season 2, which premiered earlier this month.
“Mel is really going off the rails this season,” Peet teased to Us on Saturday’s event at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre. “She is having some menopausal rage, some impulse control issues, and I think probably still has the hots for her ex-husband.”
Peet’s Mel is the ex-wife of Coop (Jon Hamm), and the actress would be on board for an onscreen reconciliation.
“We got to ask the boss at some point,” she quipped, pointing to show creator Jonathan Tropper on the red carpet. “I think that’s fun. I can see why that would be kind of explosive and complicated but I also feel like they’re … well-suited. They both are just, kind of, f***ed up.”
Your Friends & Neighbors airs weekly on Apple TV+ Fridays.
