Up In Smoke
Soap Opera Digest: What was your initial response when you heard about this story?
Nancy Lee Grahn: I had a few. My initial thought was the survival rate is not impressive. I was a little worried. Actually, I wasn’t. Maybe I should be [laughs]. Then, I thought, “Well, good. If I get to play somebody who does survive it, that sends that good beat out into the universe.” My next thought was, “Oh, boy. Do I want to come to work every day and imagine what it’s like leaving your children behind and dying?” And then I thought, “What a great opportunity for acting. The scenes are good. It’s human. It’s relatable.”Digest: This obviously brings up thoughts of Dana Reeve, the widow of Christopher Reeve, who was also a non-smoker and died of the disease.
Grahn: I can’t think of anything more horrible. I can’t even imagine. The scary thing is, a lot of these cancers don’t have symptoms. They just come upon you all of a sudden. When it’s in the early stages, the odds [of beating it] are quite good. But the whole notion is frightening because it really could happen…. Dana Reeve worked in a nightclub [as a singer] and so there was a lot of secondhand smoke…. I can’t fathom how the tobacco industry is allowed to sell cigarettes to anyone. They’re cancer sticks. Not only do they kill the people who buy them, the people who are smoking them are killing the people around them. They have the potential to do that. Why is that okay? You can’t drink when you drive because that could kill somebody, yet you’re allowed to smoke in public? We really need to rally against the tobacco companies.
Digest: This story comes at the one-year anniversary of the death of ABC News anchor Peter Jennings.
Grahn: You can’t smoke anymore. Our world is polluted. The environment is becoming more toxic. There’s global warming. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t, with good, positive thinking, somehow reverse this. Right now, in the present, to pick up a cigarette and smoke it, you have to be the stupidest human being on the face of the earth. I can tell that person firsthand what it’s like to watch somebody die and not be able to catch their breath.Digest: Did you ever smoke?
Grahn: Yes, I smoked in my twenties when I was doing theater. I thought we were all real cool.Digest: But you managed to kick the habit.
Grahn: Yes. And not only that, it’s not that hard. You think it is, but it’s not. And the worst thing is, I see all these women smoking and why are they smoking? So they don’t get fat. For God’s sake, we should all be wearing a big friggin’ T-shirt that says, “Think” on it. Have a little foresight.Digest: What would you like to see come from this storyline?
Grahn: For somebody to turn this on or see me on a magazine and think, “I could get lung cancer,” and put those cigarettes down. I don’t want people dwelling on the fact that they can get that, but why would you poison your body? Why would you up the statistics when it’s such a simple choice? We are all habitual creatures, whether it’s coffee or what-have-you. But all you do is just stop and then go moment by moment, which is how you should live your life anyway. I can assure you, anybody is capable of quitting. You just have to decide that that cigarette is not your friend. You have to want to be nice to yourself.Digest: How did you quit?
Grahn: I never smoked that much. I could have 5 cigarettes a day, but those 5 cigarettes were very important to me because they were attached to something. They were attached to [good feelings] or, if I had a fight with my boyfriend, I could smoke. Whatever it was, it was a break. Smoking meant I could just stop whatever I was doing and go smoke. I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I think people need an excuse to take a break, but in England, they’ll sit down and have a cup of tea. We’re not a civilized society anymore. We’re a very busy, got-to-be-doing-something-every-minute-of-the-day society. People do not know how to let go. A cigarette means break time. At least that’s what it was with me. Or if there was something emotional going on that I didn’t quite know what to do with, it was an excuse. You think the cigarette is your friend, but it got pointed out to me that that cigarette is my enemy. Somebody showed me.Digest: Explain.
Grahn: My father is the one. By 30, I didn’t smoke anymore. I went to a non-smoking clinic because my father insisted that I go. I went and saw what your lungs look like. You just can’t even imagine what it’s like to not be able to breathe and want to breathe. My father got emphysema 25 years after he stopped smoking. He smoked for a good long time, but he hadn’t smoked for 20 years and got emphysema. [Grahn’s father, Robert, passed away in 2001.] Breath is everything. Breath is life. You just don’t see how excruciating and how painful it is, that coughing. What I’m mimicking [on the show] is a quarter of what I would watch him do, and it would go on every night. I’d listen to him when he was staying with me and I’d think, “Is he going to survive?” I always had my finger on 9-1-1 because it was so horrible. People, you can’t smoke anymore and with the toxicity in the environment, there is no leeway. That’s why doing this [story] is so important.For information, contact the American Cancer Society at www.cancer.org.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Soap Opera Digest does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.