James Pickens Jr., a star of Grey's Anatomy, has shared that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. In a recent interview with Black Health Matters, the actor opened up about his diagnosis, noting that he has a family history of the disease. "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, and several of his brothers did too," he said. "I would have been surprised if I hadn't gotten it."
However, Pickens Jr. revealed that his doctors were able to catch the cancer early due to regular testing. After undergoing a routine physical where his PSA levels were examined, he was referred to a urologist. "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. recalled. "The urologist looked at him and said, 'Yeah, there's something here. Let's do an MRI.'" The MRI revealed "something suspicious," as Pickens Jr. described it.
The actor then opted to undergo a radical prostatectomy, which he believed was the best route to take given his rare variant of the disease. "We caught it really early, and so they thought that would be the best route to take," he said. "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. has portrayed Dr. Richard Webber in Grey's Anatomy for 22 seasons, and he has been grateful for the opportunity to play such a significant role in the show's history. "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 told The Hollywood Reporter. "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."
