Australian pop queen Kylie Minogue appeared overcome with emotion during a recent interview on US television, recalling the “trauma” that was her 2005 breast cancer diagnosis.
Minogue sat down with CBS News to discuss her latest album Tension, her current sellout Las Vegas residency, and the highs and lows of her 35-year career.
One of her lowest points came in 2005 when, days before the Australian leg of her Showgirl: Greatest Hits tour was due to commence, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The rest of the tour was postponed as Minogue sought treatment, including a lumpectomy and an eight-month cycle of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Interviewer Seth Doane noted the ordeal was “still raw” for her, 18 years on.
“You have to get on, you have to get on with stuff, but …” Minogue said, pausing as she became emotional.
“Is it fear that’s coming through?” Doane asked her of her reaction.
“It’s trauma, and any trauma resides within you,” she said, her voice shaking.
“The experience of a cancer diagnosis will live in me. It was difficult. It was also amazing.”
Doane asked her in what way the diagnosis had been amazing.
“Amazing in that you are very aware of your body, of the love that’s around you, of your capability, all sorts of things,” she explained.
Minogue, 55, has spoken very candidly in the past about how difficult it was being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 36, in particular the toll it took on her fertility.
In a 2019 interview with the Sunday Times, she revealed that the lifesaving cancer treatment meant that she was unable to have children.
“And, while that wasn’t on my agenda at the time, [cancer] changed everything,” Minogue said of her diagnosis.
“I don’t want to dwell on it, obviously, but I wonder what that would have been like. “Everyone will say there are options, but I don’t know. I can’t say there are no regrets, so I just have to be as philosophical about it as I can.”
In an earlier interview with the Sunday Times, back in 2010, Minogue said she could see the toll cancer had taken on her body.
“My face has gone through a lot of changes,” she said.
“If you look back before I was ill, there was nothing of me. I didn’t realise it at the time, but in a way I looked much older than I do now.
“All of me is just fleshier now, but my face changed. It filled out, it puffed up with the drugs.
“It’s not puffed now, but then it was because of the chemotherapy and steroids.”