Beyonce‘s mother Tina Knowles has revealed her secret cancer battle in a candid on-camera interview.
The 71-year-old has said she was recently diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer after doctors discovered two tumors during her mammogram appointment.
Knowles said Beyonce, Solange, and several friends supported her through the horrific time by attending hospital appointments ahead of scheduled surgery.
‘I was nervous,’ she told Gayle King on CBS Mornings. ‘And so they started just joking with me.’
She said Solange played a viral video about the word ‘demure’ to cheer her up at one moment.
‘I start laughing. I get out of my head. … Then I said, ‘I’m just so happy that y’all are here.’
‘And I thought about the song ‘Walk With Me,’ which they used to sing all the time,’ she said.
Knowles said Solange and her niece Angie Beyince sang the song to her before one operation.
‘It’s about God walking with you into something and protecting you,’ Knowles said through tears. ‘And I went in there feeling just like God has got me.’
Knowles said that although she’s recovered from the cancer since, she suffered significant hurdles along the way.
She told CBS Mornings she contracted a post-surgical infection so bad that she almost bailed on Glamour’s 2024 Women of the Year event in October.
Knowles said Beyonce in particular urged her to rest rather than attend the event – but she pushed through because it was important to her.
‘A lot of my life, I just refused to be recognized. I would never take an award. I would never want the attention to me … and this was my saying, “I deserve this,”‘ Knowles said.
Beyonce’s mother Tina Knowles has revealed her secret cancer battle in a candid interview
Knowles also revealed that her cancer might have been caught sooner if she hadn’t delayed her mammogram appointment.
Doctors told her that if she maintained regular screenings, which are scheduled every one to two years for women over the age of 55, the cancer may have been caught at stage zero instead of stage one.
Stage zero is when the cancer has not spread beyond the breast tissue, per the American Cancer Society.
This is a breaking news story with updates to follow.
