Hello! I’m Jackie. I’m from Long Island, New York, and I feel very lucky to report that I have the cutest, most supportive parents in the world. My mom is 4’10” on a good day, a former phys. ed. teacher, the funniest person I’ve ever met, and a chronic thrifter (a trait she passed on to me). My dad is a lifelong musician and also former phys. ed. teacher who talks like if Tony Soprano was a high school basketball coach with a very sore throat.
I have to say—I’ve led something of a charmed life. I mean, listen, I chose a career in which success is next to impossible. I spent a lot of years pretty broke and some luckier years where I did just enough commercials to pay the bills and put gas in my 15-year-old RAV-4. I did, however, have the wherewithal to recognize that I couldn’t do anything else professionally, so I (maybe insanely) trudged on.
Watch Jackie share her whole story on this episode of The Huddle:
THEN, out of NOWHERE, a deeply unexpected thing happened (in my FORTIES, no less). Get this—all my dreams started coming true! Can you stand it?! I booked an incredible part on a Netflix series called Nobody Wants This and against all odds, the show became a smash hit! In life news, I found my person Joe, we rescued our dogs, Glen and Steven Spielberg, and I was like, “Okay, this feels—dare I say—good!” If this is what 30 years of grinding looked like on the other side, I was here for it! I had my health, and my parents had theirs.
And then my dad found “nodules.” Abrupt, I know.
My mother insisted on referring to the lumps as “nodules” because she is a Jewish mother, and Jewish mothers have an entire vocabulary dedicated to not saying the scary thing out loud. "Nodules." Very chill. Nothing to write home about. Like he'd found a weird mushroom in the backyard.
The nodules turned out to be metastatic carcinomas. Cancer.
His doctors, however, couldn't find the source of the cancer, even with every type of scan. They finally did a hereditary cancer testing panel, and it came back that he was BRCA1 positive, meaning he has the genetic mutation that increases breast cancer risk and likely had male breast cancer. "Tell your kids to get tested for BRCA," the doctor told him.
So last summer, I went to get my routine annual mammogram, because I am—say what you will about me—a person who goes to the doctor. When I got there, I casually mentioned to the radiologist, “Oh, by the way, my dad just tested positive for BRCA1,” not thinking too much of it. And when I tell you the energy shifted in that room? Woof. Her whole face changed. “You know what?” she said. “Let me grab a surgeon to chat with you real quick. We would love it if you didn't leave today without getting tested." I sat there and thought, Wait, what is happening?
The surgeon—who I had never met before, because thank goodness, I didn’t need to—came in and told me that if my dad tested positive for BRCA1, there was a 50% chance I would test positive, and if I did, that meant an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers. Okay. Breathe, Jackie. I agreed to be tested, but I knew in my gut that I didn't have it. In Yiddish, it’s called kishkes—those gut feelings. I would talk to my mom and say, "In my kishkes, I know I'm negative. I just know I'm negative."
Two weeks later, the results came back: My kishkes must’ve been out of the office that day, because dammit, I was BRCA1 positive.
Before I really had time to process that and figure out what any of this meant for me and my health and my future, the doctor's office called asking when I wanted to schedule my surgery.
I was volunteering at a food bank, and I went out to the parking lot to take the call and just sat on one of those cement dividers, just gag-weeping. "What surgery?" I asked. “I don't know anything about any of this.”
I felt like I was standing in a field and someone handed me a single nail and said, "Go ahead and build the house." Like, what? When? How? I have no information or the tools to do this.
Enter my community. My buddy Kristen Bell suggested I call her oncologist friend. He informed me of the doctors I would need to move forward: an oncologist, a gynecological oncologist, a breast surgeon, a breast plastic surgeon, and a genetic counselor. So I went on tour, meeting every doctor in Los Angeles. I landed on some people I love. It was my genetic counselor who explained that I had an 85% chance of getting breast cancer and a 65% chance of getting ovarian cancer.
Now it made sense that the doctor's office called to schedule surgery. I had an EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT chance of getting breast cancer. That’s a crazy number. I’m no mathematician, but that’s almost a hundred. And because I had dense breasts, they recommended an MRI in addition to my mammogram. After viewing said MRI, the doctor told me that she saw something abnormal and wanted to take a closer look, so I would need a third MRI—this time with added biopsy—to find out what was going on. Worthy to note, I got that phone call on the way to present at the Creative Arts Emmys. I got out of the limo hysterical, someone fixed my makeup, I went on stage, got back in the car, and lost it again. That was my life from July to December. Full glamour and full terror, sometimes within the same hour.
And listen, a lot of people opt for advanced surveillance, but I knew that wasn't for me. I didn't want to look over my shoulder—well, my tits' shoulder—for the rest of my life. So I decided to say, "Ta-ta to my tatas!"
I scheduled my double mastectomy for December 1, 2025. Before the surgery, I had friends over for a Boob Voyage party. You have to pay your respects to the gals before they go. What's really weird is that there's this dark corner of the internet where the bye-bye boob merch already exists. We had boob shaped cupcake toppers, candles, pillowcases…You name it. Everyone asked, "Did you have to custom order the Boob Voyage banner?" I said, “Oh, no. She's $9.99 on the web." The sad truth is that enough women have to deal with this that a Boob Voyage sign is available on Amazon.
So on December 1, I went to sleep and woke up with new boobs.
I chose to do removal and reconstruction at the same time. You can also have the double mastectomy, get expanders, and have the implants placed months later. I have friends who did it one way and friends who did it the other. Every single piece of this journey required so much research and decision making in the face of diametrically opposing medical recommendations. One doctor said the straight-to-implant approach had more post-op risks and that the body needed to heal first. But the doctors I ultimately went with assured me that they’d done thousands of them, and that I’d be just fine—great, even. I’m so, so happy with my decision.
After the double mastectomy was complete, the surgeon sent tissue samples to pathology. They found some scary stuff, including pre-cancerous cells. It was beyond lucky I had the surgery when I did. My doctor called, so happy she was practically screaming into the phone. "We did it! We did it!” We did do it. Chills. Can I say “chills” to my own story? Oops, just did.
This experience truly has shifted my perspective on everything. I can't say I no longer sweat the small stuff—because I still do and always will—but the small stuff doesn't matter as much, and the things that matter, matter more. I used to be so career obsessed, and I still am, but my boyfriend Joe and I are going away this summer. In the past, I would say, “Well…Unless work comes up.” Now that's not the case. We're going. We need time together. The same with my parents. I talk to them every day, but I want to be with them more.
If anyone takes anything from my story, I hope it's the importance of genetic testing for hereditary cancer. I've partnered with Myriad Genetics to wave the flag. Take it from me: If multiple people in your family have had cancer, or if you have a rare cancer in your family (like male breast cancer), or if someone in your family had cancer before the age of 50, or if you're Ashkenazi Jewish like me, you should get tested. Go to learnmyrisk.com and you'll see my face and learn about all your options. Genetic testing made all the difference for me. It saved my life.
