“My work makes me really happy,” says Toks Olagundoye, an acting veteran who plays Olivia Finch on the Paramount+ reboot of Frasier. That’s one reason she stuck with the hit show’s first season despite a shock diagnosis: Over the course of filming the series, as well as Fatal Attraction, she underwent chemotherapy and six grueling surgeries to treat breast cancer. Feeling healthy ahead of Frasier’s Season 2 launch on September 19, she talks to ELLE about her healing story.
On early detection
“I’ve always had colonoscopies and mammograms early because there’s a lot of cancer in my family. It had been about three years since my last exam; I obviously didn’t get [a mammogram] while pregnant. I originally wasn’t going to get one because I was still breastfeeding. Thank goodness I did, because I had triple-negative breast cancer, a very aggressive form. I want to encourage people to get checked as early as possible, and not just for breast cancer, but for anything that they can get checked for.”
Toks Olagundoye as Conchita Lewis in Paramount’s Fatal Attraction.
On hearing her diagnosis
“This is going to sound strange, but I was almost initially relieved. I realized that for my whole life, I was just waiting to get cancer, because so many people in my family had had it. I was almost like, ‘Let’s get to it. Let’s get healing.’ I exhaled a little bit. Then I felt really annoyed and anxious, because I was like, ‘I have things to do. I’ve got a child. I’ve got a job. I’ve got a home.’ The only times that I got upset or emotional were when I thought of my kid. My sole purpose is to be around for my kid, and to make life as easy and as wonderful as possible for him, and to teach him to be a good human. I don’t want to put another dick out there on the streets, I want to raise a good, kind feminist.”
On working through her cancer treatment
“Initially my double mastectomy was pushed to the end of [shooting] my Frasier job, and then my surgeon called and told me she was feeling anxious and that we needed to just do it as soon as possible. At that point, we had only filmed three episodes. I was like, ‘Well, they’re going to write me out of it. This is it, but my life is my life.’ I sat down with the showrunners and I told them. They asked what I needed.
I went home and saw Kelsey [Grammer, the show’s star and an executive producer] calling. I was like, ‘Okay, now I’m getting fired.’ He was weeping and said, ‘I didn’t know that you had been going through this. I had no idea. I’m calling because I know how actors are, and I just want you to know this is your job. This is your part. We are your family, and whatever you need, we’re here for you, and you’re going to be so happy when this is all done. Everything’s going to be okay.’
I thought, ‘Who are these people I’m working with?’ They were amazing. They catered to every single need that I had. In the episode that I skipped, they wrote me into the [show’s sign-off] tag, and then we filmed it later because they said, ‘It’s not an episode without you.’ The people I’m with on Frasier are like family to me at this point.”
Toks Olagundoye as Olivia Finch on Paramount’s Frasier.
On discussing cancer openly
“People [at work] were constantly checking in, and no one was precious about it. It was almost like I had a cold, where they were like, ‘How are you doing?’—which was nice. That’s also why I like to be candid about it, because I don’t want people to be scared to talk about it. I would like for people to hear my experience and know, Hey, you could still hire people who are sick. They’re still going to show up and do a good job.”
On support that really helps
“Talk to as many people as you can about it who know about it. Do not go online and start Googling. I did it exactly one time. My best friend said, ‘Anything you want to Google, tell me. I will do it for you, and I will tell you the information that I think is important.’ I highly recommend the book Braving Chemo, written by a doctor who’d had breast cancer. There are so many things in there that surgeons and oncologists don’t tell you. I also learned about cold-capping [for hair loss] and L-glutamine for neuropathy, and I had a fantastic acupuncturist.”
On self-blame
“I had that idea that I must have done something for this to happen to me. My acupuncturist and my best friend told me, ‘Don’t buy into that nonsense.’ I had to let go of that. Karma is not punishment, it is a lesson that you learn. I hope that there are not people out there who believe that if they have an illness, or something really terrible has happened to them, that they deserved it in some way.”
On how cancer changed her mindset
“I am built to worry and problem solve. That’s kind of who I am. I still do the problem solving. I don’t do much of the worrying anymore. There’s no point. Things are going to happen anyway. Just do the planning, but the worrying is just going to make things less pleasant.
Diving fully into being nice and being of service is something that has become more important to me. I was really surrounded by it. I try to be very mindful of being kind, patient, and the person who makes people feel welcome and at ease. I’m mindful of every single person who is around me. I’m mindful now that if somebody has an attitude, it’s not personal; they’re probably having a bad day. It sounds so hippie and clichéd, but if we could all be that way, this world would just be easier. If there’s anything I can do to help somebody now, at this point in my life, I’ll do it. And with my kid, I give so much good energy to him. I’m trying to teach him [to do the same].”
A version of this story appears in the October 2024 issue of ELLE.
Kathleen Hou is ELLE’s Beauty Director. Previously, she held the same title at New York Magazine’s The Cut. She’s appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Vogue India, Forbes, and Allure. She was also a co-founder of Donate Beauty, a grassroots beauty donation project started during the COVID-19 crisis, which donated over 500,000 products to over 30,000 healthcare workers across 500-plus hospitals.