Ryan O’Neal Speaks About Farrah Fawcett’s Losing Cancer Battle

Ryan O’Neal has given his first interview about his longtime partner Farrah Fawcett’s valiant but devastating battle with cancer for the past two and a half years.

He reveals how the anal cancer long ago spread to other parts of her body, including her liver, saying, “She stays in bed now. The doctors see that she is comfortable. Farrah is on IVs, but some of that is for nourishment. The treatment has pretty much ended.”

Fawcett, 62, will give viewers a very personal look at her journey through illness in Farrah’s Story, a two-hour NBC documentary she shot with her friend Alana Stewart that airs Friday, May 15th.

The filming began when Farrah brought a small camera with her the day she expected to be given a clean bill of health, only to discover the disease had returned. Since then she’s documented everything from her trips to Germany for treatment not yet approved in the US, to the visit of her son, Redmond, on April 25th when he was released from prison for three hours to see her.

In his jail-issued jumpsuit and in shackles, the documentary shows him climbing into his sleeping mother’s bed and crying. “Oh my gosh, my gosh,” he says as he hugs the frail figure next to him. “Oh, my gosh.”

O’Neal also reveals one particularly cruel aspect of the disease, Farrah has lost her iconic Charlie's Angels golden hair.

“The hair is gone. Her famous hair. I have it at home. She didn’t care. I rub her head. It’s kind of fun, actually, this great, tiny little head. How she carried all that hair I’ll never know. She doesn’t have a vanity about it.”

The actor says his greatest heartbreak is imagining what will happen if Fawcett loses her battle with cancer. 

“A week ago Farrah said to me, ‘Am I going to make it?’ I said, ‘Yes, you’ll make it. And if you don’t, I’ll go with you.’”

Heartbreaking.

Cancer is, as O’Neal says, an insidious enemy.

—Sasha Perl-Raver