Anjelica Huston ‘Didn’t Have a Good Time’ Making Smash for This One Motive (Unique)

Anjelica Huston’s time on Smash wasn’t all roses.

From 2012-2013, the Hollywood legend, 73, starred on the NBC musical drama as Eileen Rand, a Broadway producer going by way of a divorce.

“I wasn’t very pleased after I was on that present,” Huston tells PEOPLE. “I used to be residing in New York and I wasn’t very pleased residing in New York for the plain causes. It was a chilly winter, and I did not really feel very prized in that function. I used to be a bit depressed by it. It was onerous actually, I did not actually have a superb time making it.”

Whereas on Smash, the Broadway adaption of which opened on Thursday, April 10, Huston was additionally nonetheless grappling with the 2008 loss of life of her husband of 16 years, Robert Graham.

“Bob was very particular and really irreplaceable,” she says. “Rather a lot’s gone on since Bob died.”

Certainly, shortly after the premiere of her movie John Wick: Chapter 3–Parabellum in 2019, Huston obtained a most cancers analysis.

“That was a really severe second for me,” she says. “I managed to outlive it, and I am happy with myself.”

“It is not one thing that got here calmly,” she continues of her most cancers, the kind of which she needs to maintain non-public. “It got here as an enormous shock, nevertheless it made me acutely aware of what I should not do, of locations I should not go. A kind of locations was taking life too severely. So now when the chance arises, I chortle, and I attempt to not make an enormous deal out of issues.”

Now, Huston says, she’s “within the clear.”

“I am on the four-year mark, and which means a lot to me,” she says. “It is a implausible factor. I am very happy with myself, and I have been very fortunate. My medical doctors have been great.”

When she discovered she was most cancers free 4 years in the past, Huston — who nonetheless does common scans — saved her celebration easy and “simply walked in my backyard and smelled the roses and thought how intelligent I used to be.”

After six years of conserving her most cancers battle non-public, Huston — who subsequent stars in BritBox’s three-part restricted collection Agatha Christie’s In the direction of Zero premiering April 16 — felt able to share what she’s been by way of in hopes of uplifting others.

“Typically you’re feeling like you do not wish to discuss it for the plain causes, however there’s loads to be stated for speaking about it and getting it on the market and celebrating the truth that one’s come by way of,” she says. “Life is tenuous and great. It additionally offers you the concept that the world is massive and you’ll in some way match as much as it. That you just’re prepared for no matter occurs.”

Agatha Christie’s In the direction of Zero premieres over three nights beginning April 16 on BritBox. Tickets for Smash are actually on sale.