Grey’s Anatomy star James Pickens Jr. has revealed he’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The actor opened up about his diagnosis in a recent interview with Black Health Matters, where he noted that he has a family history of prostate cancer.
“It’s not the kind of news anyone wants to hear, but to be honest, prostate cancer has run through my family. My father had it. He had a lot of brothers; several of them had it,” he said. “I would have been surprised if I hadn’t gotten it.”
However, Pickens Jr. revealed his doctors told him they were “able to catch it so early because you were being tested,” as he explained that he was referred to a urologist after undergoing a routine physical where his PSA levels were examined.
“I went back in January, and when my PSA numbers came back, my primary said, ‘Yeah, you know what? It’s ticked up some more. I want to send you back to the urologist,’” Pickens Jr. said. “The urologist looked at him and said, ‘Yeah, there’s something here. Let’s do an MRI,’’which we did, and it revealed, as he called it, ‘something suspicious.’”
The actor then opted to undergo a radical prostatectomy. He added, “We caught it really early, and so they thought that would be the best route to take. I do have a rare variant that you don’t see very often. They wanted to err on the side of caution and keep an eye on it.”
Pickens Jr. portrays Dr. Richard Webber in Grey’s Anatomy, where he’s starred across the show’s 22 seasons. Of his tenure playing Dr. Webber, Pickens Jr. told The Hollywood Reporter that he’s “been really blessed to play this character for as long as I have.”
“I’ve watched this character evolve over 21 seasons — his ups and downs, I’d like to think of him as being incredibly human through all this,” he added. “We’ve taken this journey with him when he’s been victorious, when he’s been in valleys and had to climb himself back up.”
