Olivia Munn said the best advice she got from Shannen Doherty during her battle with cancer was to be as proactive as possible.
Mann and Doherty developed a close relationship in the months before the “Beverly Hills, 90210” actress died after a long battle with breast cancer that had spread to her bones and brain.
“She told me, after going through something like this…just to be aggressive,” Mann told an audience at Los Angeles Magazine’s LA Women’s Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Friday.
The Your Friends and Neighbors actress added that she knows she’s lucky because she had a “fighting chance” while many women don’t.
“I don’t look at cancer like, ‘I can’t believe this happened to me, it’s so unfair.’ There’s no room in my heart and my energy for thinking about how unfair things are,” she said in a conversation with the magazine’s editor, Jasmine Rosenberg. “Thank God, I think I’m one of the lucky ones.”
At a luncheon where she was honored as Woman of the Year, Mann, 45, detailed her breast cancer history and encouraged women to take the Tyler Cusick Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Test, a tool that helps calculate a woman’s five-year and lifetime risk of developing breast cancer.
She recalled having a clear mammogram and ultrasound in January 2023, which are commonly performed on women with dense breasts. Also, genetic mutation testing showed zero percent. However, her risk assessment test result was 37.3 percent (above 20 percent is considered high risk).
Just a few months later, in April, she went for an MRI scan that revealed she had Luminal B breast cancer, an aggressive form of cancer, in both breasts.
During her treatment, Mann underwent five surgeries, including a lymph node dissection, nipple delay surgery, a double mastectomy and reconstruction, an oophorectomy (to remove the ovaries), and a partial hysterectomy. She completed her surgery in April 2025.
“I used to be very tough and whatever fight came my way, I was going to take it. I didn’t shy away from confrontation,” she told the crowd, which included Jennie Garth, Colin Fox, Jane Seymour and her best friend Jessica St. Clair.
“What I realized after I got cancer is that I’m wearing this armor,” she continued. “I think a lot of women need to protect themselves with this big, heavy armor. I looked at this mountain I had to climb and thought, I can’t climb a mountain this high with all this extra weight. So I had to take the armor down.”
She said that when she got to the other side, she realized that “the weaker I am, the stronger I am, and I can carry that with me every day.”
The “Newsroom” star concluded, “We don’t really know how courageous and brave we are until it’s tested. And now I know I have it in me. I know I can try anything.”
Ms Mann, who has two children, Malcolm, 4, and Mae, 1, with husband John Mulaney, is currently working with Senator Mark Kelly to pass legislation that would make lifelong risk assessment testing part of the standard of care for all women.
“I don’t think it’s fair that women always have to know what to ask their doctors,” she says.
Mann previously thanked Doherty for getting him through the fight at the Hollywood Creative Alliance’s Astra TV Awards in June 2025.
When Doherty passed away in July 2024, Mann mourned her friend’s death, writing on social media: “Just a few months ago, she asked how I was doing and if there was anything she could do for me. So Shanann offered to help me, even though I was in the final stages of battling this terrible disease.”
