Strictly Come Dancing star Alex Kingston has admitted that she worried that she was “not going to get another job ever again” after pulling out of a project due to her cancer diagnosis.
The Doctor Who actor, 63, shared her uterine cancer diagnosis with The Independent last October, revealing that she underwent a hysterectomy and radiation therapy the year before. “That took up a huge part of my life,” she said at the time.
Opening up about her recovery in a new interview, Kingston said that while the cancer has now been successfully treated, she was forced to drop out of a TV project following her diagnosis.
“I felt very bad, as if I’d let the production down,” she told The Telegraph in an interview published on Wednesday (22 April).
“I’d never done anything like that before. I just thought, ‘Well, that’s it. I’m not going to get another job ever again,’ so it was lovely to be offered Secret Service. It proved the perfect role because it wasn’t too demanding and allowed me to ease back in.”
Kingston takes on the role of an MI6 intelligence security chief in the upcoming ITV spy thriller, which stars Gemma Arterton.
She also said that she “jumped at the chance of doing” Strictly Come Dancing last year after her cancer treatment. She competed with professional dancer Johannes Radebe, with the pair making it to week 10 of the series.
“Now I literally felt like the person I used to be, so fully of energy,” Kingston said, although she added that during one performance on the show, her rib “popped out”. She told The Independent at the time that it “didn’t go back in”, so they were forced to make changes to the choreography at the last minute.
She added to The Telegraph: “Then I got a stomach bug and vomited it back into place!”
Last October, Kingston revealed that she finally sought medical help for bloating and achiness when she noticed blood in her urine. “Even though my body was telling me there was something very seriously wrong, I kept thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got a bad UTI or fibroids,’” she said.
She later haemorrhaged while performing in a play at Chichester Festival in the summer of 2024, but carried on with the show. “I ran off stage and said, ‘Grab me some pads!’ We shoved some pads in my pants and I went back on stage and carried on. That was how we finished the show.”
In March, she hit out at Craig Revel Horwood’s criticism of her Salsa to Mousse T’s “Horny” on Strictly after the judge said she looked like “a woman who is having a midlife crisis”.
“It was a little mean-spirited for Craig to say that, and also I just felt like it’s exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to advocate,” she told Prima. “It’s like, no, if you want to dance and swing a devil’s tail around and you’re in your 90s, do it. I mean, this is your life. So live it!”
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