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Husband and wife Michael Tucker and
Jill Eikenberry share the experience of surviving
breast cancer at Hadassah's opening meeting.

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Special to the Jewish News

I ill Eikenberry and Michael
Tucker have been partners
in marriage and career, but
their strongest partnership
came in a battle against disease.
Although it took the couple some
time to come forward with their life-
changing experience, they consider
openness important now and are
traveling around the country with a
message of conquest and hope for
those coping with breast cancer.
The stars of the 1980s' hit series
L.A. Law tell their story Sept. 12 at
this season's opening meeting of the
Greater Detroit Chapter of Hadassah.
"I hope women will bring their
husbands because we always get
comments that [more] men need to
hear this," says Eikenberry, a former
Yale drama student who met her
husband of 20 years when they were
both performing at the Arena Stage
in Washington, D.C.
Eikenberry, soon to be seen in an
episode of the Lifetime channel's Strong
Medicine, recently finished a still
unnamed film in Buffalo and looks
toward its release in 2001. Tucker, a
Carnegie Tech drama graduate who
received a Good Guys Award from the
National Women's Political Caucus,
recently was part of a pilot yet to be
picked up for a series.
Before traveling to Michigan, the
two talked about their presentation,
careers and family with the Detroit

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JN: What will you be covering when

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you speak, before Hadassah?
MT: We are just going to tell our
story. We'll briefly tell the history of
our relationship and our struggles as
one career went up and the other
down, and we'll tell about Jill discov-
ering a lump in her breast before
shooting the first season of L.A. Law.
We didn't know whether we could go
ahead and do the series. When we did,
we kept [the cancer] to ourselves and
crashed into fame and fortune while

has interviews with more than 100
women and one man who had breast
cancer. It's primarily the stories of people
who have survived anywhere from two
weeks to 40 years, including my aunt, a
breast cancer survivor who wasn't talking
about that until after I went public. In
the documentary, we also are inter-
viewed by the producer. It was the first
time that we started telling the truth
about what it had been for us, especially
what it had been for Mike. That was the
beginning of a new phase for us, and I
think one of the things that is unique
about our talk is that it is the two of us
talking about cancer as it applies to a
family as opposed to just the person.

JN: About how many of these speak-
ing engagements are you doing a year?
MT: We do 12-15.

Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker:: "One
of the things that is unique about our talk
is that it is the two of us talking about
cancer as it applies to a family as opposed
to just the person," says Eikenberry

we were holding on for dear life.
JE: The second part of the talk has to
do with how cancer has changed our
priorities and what we would almost
say are the benefits of having some-
thing like that happen because it really
turns you around and has you look at
yourself and your life in a different way.

JN: What motivated you to share this
information?
JE: It was a combination of things.
Before and after my treatment, I had
incidents when people shared their
stories with me, and all of a sudden, I
had a new kind of hope and [sense of]
possibility. Two years after the diagno-
sis, when I was known as the "actress
on L.A. Law" and not the "woman
with cancer" — I had been'very afraid
of the stigma of being known as the
woman with cancer" — I was
approached by someone who wanted
to do a documentary, and I decided to
go public with it.

"

JN: How does that documentary
compare with your presentation?
JE: The documentary (Destined to Live)

JN: Does your presentation change
when you're speaking before a Jewish
group?
MT: We spoke to Hadassah in Seattle,
and it was a great evening. We don't
tailor it to the audience, but we do
respond to the audience. That hap-
pened to be a very warm one. I'm
looking forward to that again.
JE: We always feel that the Q-and-A
time, when we interact with the audi-
ence, is the most fun part of it, and we
had a really responsive group the last
time, so we're looking forward to this.

JN: Can you think of a response that
was special?
JE: Something that happened in New
York seemed like the perfect thing to
happen out of our talk. Somebody got
up and asked how we dealt with our
children. She said she was the child of
a woman with breast cancer and didn't
know what to do. Then, somebody
else got up and said that she had a
support group for adult children going
through this. [She gave the woman
the] number and address and invited
her to join. It was wonderful. We've
also had some wonderful responses
from men. We've had men say that
they're glad we've talked about things
nobody else has talked about. It gave
them an opportunity to open up.

JN: Did you ever feel you had to put
on an act for yourself to bring up
your spirits in some way?
JE: What was wonderful for me was
that I sort of leapt into L.A. Law right
at a time when I was feeling most vic-
timized by the disease and most fright-
ened, and I played a character who
was very aggressive and powerful. It
was wonderful to go to work every day