James Pickens Jr. has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, just as his Grey’s Anatomy character is dealing with a similar health scare on the show.
“It’s not the kind of news anyone wants to hear, but to be honest, prostate cancer has run through my family,” Pickens, 73, recently told Black Health Matters. “My father had it. He had a lot of brothers; several of them had it. I would have been surprised if I hadn’t gotten it.”
He added, “I’ve got a 90-year-old first cousin, who’s still alive, actually, [and] he had it. His son has it, a couple of his brothers had it. No one, as far as I know, has succumbed to it.”
Pickens has starred as Dr. Richard Webber on all 22 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. Richard, who recently returned to his role as chief of surgery, announced at the end of the Thursday, November 13, episode that he was diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer. (Richard’s wife Catherine Fox, played by Debbie Allen, is also living with cancer.)
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As for Pickens, he was diagnosed earlier this year.
“I started getting my annual physical 34 years ago, and I started my PSA testing when I was 41. I’m 73 now,” he recalled to the outlet. “My urologist said, ‘Because you were so diligent in that piece of your health, it was to your advantage. We were able to catch it so early because you were being tested.’”
Pickens found out in January that there was a tumor located on his prostate, but it hadn’t spread further. He subsequently opted to undergo a prostatectomy, where a man’s prostate gland is surgically removed.
“We caught it really early, and so they thought that would be the best route to take,” Pickens explained. “I do have a rare variant that you don’t see very often. They wanted to err on the side of caution and keep an eye on it. It was rare enough that they wanted to make sure that they were crossing all the T’s and dotting all their I’s, but they hadn’t seen one that was detected as early as mine.”
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Even before his diagnosis, Pickens was diligent about screening for any sign of cancer.
“My father had prostate cancer. It didn’t kill him, but he had it. He also had two brothers, I think, that had it as well,” the actor exclusively told Us Weekly in September 2024. “It was something I felt incumbent upon myself to be diligent [about] as I looked into my own health. I started being pretty proactive when I turned right around, I guess about 50, and started to get yearly prostate exams.”
Pickens further wanted to raise awareness for prostate cancer, which is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in men in the United States.
“I thought it was very important that as Black man that we needed to be made more aware of how this disease played a part in our community,” he told Us at the time. “There’s a lot more prevalence in the African American community.”
