By Zoe Papadakis | Thursday, 27 August 2026 01:34 PM EDT
“Cougar Town” alum Busy Philipps spoke out for the first time about a frightening health crisis she endured earlier this year.
In an interview with People, the 47-year-old actor revealed she underwent surgery to remove a malignant mass from her frontal lobe just weeks before beginning production on her new CBS series, “Cupertino.”
“I’m grateful that I’m alive,” Philipps said, calling the period “the weirdest six months of my life.”
The discovery occurred almost by chance. Interested in getting a Prenuvo full-body MRI scan after reading about it on Instagram, Philipps was initially discouraged by her primary care physician in 2025, who noted her annual physical and blood work were fine.
However, her cousin’s husband, Beverly Hills internist Dr. Justin Donlan, encouraged her to pursue it.
After a blizzard pushed her appointment to Feb. 12, Philipps nearly canceled it entirely. She was grieving the death of her former “Dawson’s Creek” costar James Van Der Beek the previous day, preparing for a high-stakes pitch meeting, and planning a trip to Scottsdale, Arizona, to assist her sister Leigh Ann with a medical procedure. Her ex-husband, filmmaker Marc Silverstein, urged her to keep the appointment.
Following the scan, Dr. Donlan notified her of a lesion on her brain. Subsequent scans led Dr. Orrin Devinsky, an NYU Langone neurologist, to deliver the diagnosis over the phone:
“‘This is a real tumor, and it’s inside your brain. And Busy, it’s got to come out,'” Philipps recalled him saying. “I was hyperventilating and trying to breathe.”
Before undergoing surgery, Philipps had a candid conversation with her daughters, Birdie Silverstein, 18, and Cricket Silverstein, 13. While Cricket remained calm, Birdie was overwhelmed.
Philipps reassured her elder daughter, saying, “Birdie, you’re just not in the movie where your mom dies your senior year of high school. That’s just not the movie that you’re in. I promise you.”
On March 2, Dr. John Golfinos performed a five-hour surgery at NYU Langone to extract the 2.6-centimeter mass. A biopsy confirmed it was a grade 2 oligodendroglioma, a rare cancer diagnosed in only 1,100 to 1,300 Americans annually.
Neuro-oncologist Dr. Alexandra Miller explained that while the tumor is classified as malignant due to its potential to regrow, it carries the best prognosis among malignant gliomas.
Even in the hospital, Philipps maintained her sense of humor, asking Golfinos if he could perform a brow lift during the procedure.
“He laughed, and he told me no,” she recalled. “I was like … ‘You should start to think about offering that.'”
Following an April setback involving a staphylococcus infection at the incision site that required a second procedure to clear, Philipps made a swift recovery. Her close friend Michelle Williams provided steady support, arranging food service during her healing process.
While she will require regular monitoring to ensure the mass does not return, Philipps remains optimistic and urges others to advocate for their health.
“We are frequently told by doctors that there is nothing to worry about [when] you kind of know that there’s something to worry about,” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of in having information. It’s only empowering.”
