The mother of late actor Shannen Doherty is sharing about the grief she continues to experience nearly two months after her daughter died of cancer at age 53.
Rosa Doherty assumed hosting duties of Shannen Doherty’s podcast, Let’s Be Clear, last month. In doing so, she hoped to pay tribute to her famous daughter’s life and Hollywood legacy.
On Monday’s episode, Rosa said Shannen is “with me all the time”, as part of a lengthy conversation with Chris Cortazzo, one of the late actor’s longtime pals.
“I can, at any moment, just burst out because it’s such a loss,” she said of her daughter, who endeared herself to legions of fans on Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed.
“I’ve said it before,” she continued. “A parent should never go, you know, last longer than a child. A child should never go before a parent. It’s things we have no control of.”
Rosa also shared that she was relying on her faith to help her cope with her loss.
“My faith just tells me it’s all in God’s hands,” she said. “That’s how Shannen felt, and that’s how she lived her life.
“I was like, ‘Aren’t you afraid to do this?’ She said, ‘Whatever is meant to happen is going to happen. I just have to be smart and take the precautions that I need to take, and then it’s in God’s hands.’ And that’s how she lived her life.”
She went on to note: “With cancer, [Shannen] fought this battle and she fought it so hard and she fought it, so much of that was with her faith. And she says, ‘I just have faith that I’m doing what I need to do. That’s all I can do’.”
Shannen went public with her breast cancer diagnosis in 2015, but the actor refused to let her health get in the way of her work, and she reunited with many of her 90210 co-stars on the 2019 revival series BH90210.
Elsewhere in Monday’s podcast episode, Rosa and her guest discussed some of Shannen’s less-heralded projects, notably the 1994 made-for-television film A Burning Passion: The Margaret Mitchell Story, in which the actor portrayed the Gone With The Wind author.
“Everything you saw was Shannen, she developed it all herself,” Rosa said. “To sit there, in my room alone with just my little dog, and this comes on and I’m watching it ... it even gave me, as her mom, a greater appreciation of what she was able to do.”
Listen to the latest episode of Let’s Be Clear featuring Rosa Doherty and Chris Cortazzo below.