Magda Szubanski confronts incurable cancer prognosis, details brutal health battle in 60 Minutes interview

Iconic Aussie actress Magda Szubanski has declared she has “nothing left to hide” – opening up on her cancer prognosis, family health history and a childhood trauma secret she has carried for decades in a wide-ranging interview.

Szubanski, 65, has been battling Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a rare and aggressive blood cancer, since May last year.

Appearing on 60 Minutes – marking her first public interview since revealing her diagnosis – Szubanski said it was an “incurable relapse in cancer”.

“So, it’s almost sure that it will come back. It’s a question of ‘when’ and then ‘how bad’,” she told the program and host Tracy Grimshaw.

“The median survival rate is eight-and-a-half years. So, I could go less, or I could go more.”

Szubanski joked she would “pitch for more” as she opened up on her health battle.

She described how she had felt like her bones were “splitting” – later learning her bone marrow was inflamed at the time.

“It would wake me up in the middle of the night, literally wake up with my sorts of dream voice saying ‘you’re dying, you’re dying’.

“So, it was like, dude, there’s something wrong here. You know, there’s something really wrong.”

In an ironic twist, after visiting a haematologist for her bone marrow biopsy, Szubanski said she had to film an ad for Medibank.

Szubanski said the chemotherapy treatment “annihilates” your immune system, comparing it to a “multi-car pile up”.

“I’m not being a Pollyanna about this because I think that’s not fair to people to do that,” she said.

“But for those of us who, you know, it hangs by only a couple of strands, it’s a very different feeling.

“It is just a different state of consciousness. It’s a different awareness of death. It’s not abstract.”