Broadway Leading Lady Marin Mazzie Is Facing Her Most Challenging Role: Cancer Survivor

Three-time Tony Award nominee Marin Mazzie is fighting cancer, according to a blog post by her husband, actor Jason Danieley.

In his blog entry titled "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar" on his blog "The Danieley Digest" Danieley posted Sept. 27, "I am referring to a particularly tough journey my family has been on over the last five months and the strong, positive center of this journey is my wife Marin."

Danieley went on to chart a timeline of his life over the past five months since the opening of The Visit, in which he appeared with Chita Rivera. The focus of the timeline shifts from himself to Mazzie, and the discomfort she began to feel in her abdomen while appearing in the Encores! April revival of Zorba!. Tests were done and, as Danieley put it, "To try and make this long story short… The tests came back and they found a growth on one of her ovaries which we would later find out were on both ovaries and extended on to her peritoneal wall. "

Danieley wrote that Mazzie decided that "she wasn’t going to sit idly by. She had a role to do, a very important role, and that is to be a cancer survivor."

He wrote, "Marin is being treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering hospital here in NYC. It is one of, if not the, best cancer hospitals in the country. Her surgeon is the head of the gynecological oncology division and her medical oncologist is also very accomplished and both are wonderful human beings."

Mazzie underwent 12 weeks of chemotherapy, followed by a hysterectomy, and is in the midst of another 12 weeks of chemo. Mazzie is now resting at their home in the Berkshire Mountains of New York state. Danieley expressed faith that Mazzie will be back in action as early as November doing concerts. "We will be in San Francisco in December with our new show from Barrington Stage Co. Life is different. Life is new."

He asks that fans who wish to contact her do so by posting on his Facebook page, and not to press for personal responses right away. "Please know that even though Marin is strong it does take a lot of energy to even acknowledge someone’s well wishes in a simple way. Right now her focus needs to be on keeping her strength up.... That way she can read them but not respond to them. That is just too much to handle right now."

He concluded, "Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, meditations, white light… anything and everything you are capable of mustering that is positive and good and sending it to Marin."

Mazzie made her Broadway debut as a replacement in the original run of Big River and subsequently played Rapunzel and understudied Cinderella and The Witch in the original run of Into the Woods. She came to stardom originating the role of the beautiful Clara in Stephen Sondheim's Passion (Tony nomination). Subsequent major roles include Mother in Ragtime (Tony nomination), the title role in the 2000 revival of Kiss Me, Kate (Tony nomination) and most recently appeared as diva Helen Sinclair in Woody Allen's 2014 musical Bullets Over Broadway.