"I imagine there are a lot of women my age, women who grew up with Shannen on their television screens, who feel the same way I do," the author writes in her essay 'Life Is the Prize'
Credit: Abbe Foreman; Little, Brown and Company
NEED TO KNOW
- In her essay “Life Is the Prize,” author Allison Sweet Grant reflects on finding a “kinship” with actress Shannen Doherty in the wake of her own breast cancer diagnosis
- “I imagine there are a lot of women my age, women who grew up with Shannen on their television screens, who feel the same way I do,” Grant writes of Doherty, who died in 2024 at age 53 after years of living with breast cancer
- Grant’s memoir, Lump: A Memoir in Ineloquent Reflections, for which PEOPLE can exclusively reveal the cover, will be published on Sept. 15
I was Team Brenda long before there was Team anything.
It was 1992, I was in the eighth grade, and Beverly Hills, 90210 was at the height of its popularity. In its third season, the plot had finally reached that boiling point of teenage lust simmering since episode one: the apex of the romantic triangle.
Brenda, played by Shannen Doherty, had spent the summer gallivanting around Paris and returned home to find the love of her life and her best friend had spent their summer canoodling behind her back. They told her, in no uncertain terms, they were choosing each other over her. Sorry. Dylan was the prize. Kelly had won it. And millions of impressionable '90s girls watched Brenda walk off on her own.
I wasn’t self-aware enough at the time to say why I rooted for Brenda over Kelly. Maybe it was my underdeveloped disdain for the object of both girls’ affection, choosing the popular blonde over the pensive brunette. Or maybe it was that Brenda was the introspective, moody underdog type and I was sympathetic toward the wannabes. But the more I think about it, 30 years later, with a little more life experience and a little more perspective, I’d argue my fascination had very little to do with Brenda and a whole lot more to do with Shannen.
There was something special about Shannen — and it wasn’t just in her role as Brenda Walsh on 90210. She stole the show in every part she played. From her plucky performance as the bully in Heathers, to her acerbically sweet cameos in Jay and Silent Bob’s View Askewniverse, to her stint as the telekinetic don’t-mess-with-me sister in the series Charmed, Shannen’s charged and passionate persona dominated the screen. She was real and undeniable. Shannen had a spirit in her, a fire, and it came shining through.
Credit: Little, Brown and Company
Then in 2015, at the age of 43, Shannen was diagnosed with breast cancer, and as an outsider, I witnessed that fire grow high and hot. She didn’t give in to her illness — she punched out.
She went on talk shows and gave interviews. She openly chronicled her experience with losing her hair. She partnered with organizations like Stand Up to Cancer to promote the importance of mammograms and other cancer screenings. She insisted on working throughout her illness, all while recovering from surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.
After she entered remission in 2017, Shannen continued to fight for the cause, discussing her own challenges and triumphs as publicly as anything else.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, at the age of 40. My immediate impulse was to dig the darkest hole I could and dive straight in. But after the initial pother and panic, Shannen was the first person I thought of.
I had always felt a celebrity-normie sort of kinship with her. She was, after all, the black jeans and leather jacket-wearing rebel-light role model during my most malleable adolescent years. She was an icon of a different type of femininity. Whether it be a character she played on screen or her Teen Beat, damn-the-man off-screen image, there was no one, in my opinion, cooler. She was shrewd. She was strong. She didn’t take anything lying down. If Shannen could kick cancer in the cojones, surely, I could, too.
When cancer showed its ugly face again in 2019, this time in her bones and her brain, Shannen did not shrink into the shadows — she stood her ground once again. She advocated for quality of life and autonomy for metastatic cancer patients.
In 2023, she launched a podcast called Let’s Be Clear, in which she candidly discussed the spread of her own disease and furthered the conversation about living with advanced-stage cancer, among other topics. She interviewed her own physicians. She talked about her goals. She talked about her regrets. She did not shy away from discussing the lifetime of little fires that always seemed to crop up around her that, at some times, consumed her.
Shannen exemplified the epitome of effortless, angsty Brenda-ness. She had drawn the short end of the stick once again, and yet she was the same Shannen that I had always known, blazing white-hot from within.
Credit: Abbe Foreman
Tragically, Shannen’s fire burned out in July of 2024. She was just 53 years old.
The closest I ever got to meeting Shannen was a torn-out magazine interview taped to the back of my bedroom door in between a Rolodex rotation of end-of-the-century floppy-haired heartthrobs.
But I imagine there are a lot of women my age, women who grew up with Shannen on their television screens, who feel the same way I do. Like they knew her. Like they loved her. Like they’re sure they would’ve shared kohl eyeliner and crushed velvet chokers and been the very best of friends.
But the impression Shannen left upon me goes much deeper than that.
Anyone who’s dealt with cancer in any form knows that life is the prize. And just like Brenda all those years ago, Shannen lost. But, also like Brenda, Shannen didn’t slink away. She got angry. She got loud. She stood up for herself. She refused to let anyone give her any s–t. Shannen squared her shoulders, crossed her arms over her chest, and chose her own way home. She said goodbye on her terms. And who wouldn’t want to cheer for that?
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So, yes, once upon a time, I was on Team Brenda. But I’ll always be on Team Shannen.
Lump: A Memoir in Ineloquent Reflections will be published on Sept. 15 by Little, Brown and Company and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.
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