Feeling old, being young: How one actor manages her time on-screen while surviving breast cancer
Courtesy of Miranda McKeon
By Mary L. Dudy and Caroline Morris
Best known for her role on the Netflix period drama “Anne With an E,” Miranda McKeon is also a writer, a creator, a cancer survivor and, most recently, a businesswoman. While still in her undergraduate career, McKeon founded the online store and community Fill Your Tank, her first entrepreneurial endeavor with a mission informed by her dedication to living in the present. Both her work in all its forms and her health struggle deeply influence her perception of time.
We know you from your work as Josie Pye on “Anne With an E.” Was that your first role?
Honestly, I had not done a ton of work before “Anne With an E.” To put it plainly, they took a chance on me.
How did you approach playing a character in the 19th century?
I realized that we as humans, and our lives, are actually quite similar to how they once were in the 1800s. You can see that there are stark differences in the way that women held positions in society. I think we benefit from a lot more earned power and freedom today as women, but at our core, even though things look a little bit different now, they’re actually quite similar.
How does the show address that?
It was obviously modernized in a lot of ways in bringing in themes that are more talked about today, like race and gender and sexuality. It integrated the context of the time.
How do you balance spontaneity as a character with preparation as an actor?
Being able to break up time into smaller chunks is the best way to make scenes feel natural. You as an actor need to know the general timeline of a character’s arc in order to do it justice. But the character only knows their life as it’s happening to them.
May we shift gears to talk about your cancer diagnosis?
I was 19 at the time, a little over two years ago. Now I’m cancer-free and in remission.
So you were with your friends when you discovered the lump. What was that experience like?
Yeah, we were having a grand old time, but immediately when I felt it, I thought there was something very wrong. We did some searching online and basically chalked it up to nothing, but it still wasn’t sitting right, so I called my doctor the next day. About two weeks later I got my initial diagnosis.
And what was that initial diagnosis?
It was invasive ductal carcinoma — stage 3 and hormone-positive.
What does hormone-positive mean?
My tumor fed off of estrogen and progesterone. So most of my treatment now is limiting estrogen and progesterone in my body.
How do you do that?
It’s a monthly injection that puts me into medically induced menopause. So it’s a massive shot that I’ve learned to self-inject; I put it in my thigh muscle. I have not had my period for two years, and I won’t have it for another five, I believe.
How does it feel to have your body skipped forward in time?
I’m not sure that I really feel completely in my body, like that of a woman in her 50s. I definitely still feel youthful in a lot of ways. But that’s also kind of a tricky concept — that in a way my body is jumping forward in time and then will jump back again.
Can you elaborate on what it means to jump back again?
There’s a feeling of stopping time. There is a time where I will go off these medications and hopefully regain that cycle. I am hoping that I will be able to have children naturally when that time comes. Freezing my eggs was more of a precaution than anything. But it’s strange that I have eight eggs right now on ice that are this little time capsule from when I was 19.
Courtesy of Miranda McKeon
Your fans followed your journey through your blog. How did writing help you cope with your diagnosis?
My freshman year of college, I started writing everything down. And so, naturally, when I was diagnosed, my writing definitely changed — I was not producing writing as a form of documentation, but rather as an outlet to survive.
That’s powerful. Will you elaborate?
I really started getting into writing when I found the power in that element of time, that form of documentation and writing as a form of freezing time and making these little time stamps that captured my innermost dialogue at those different times.
With all this reflection and these time stamps to turn back to, what have you learned about making the most of your time on earth?
Where I have found my most wisdom and growth throughout this cancer experience was in contemplating death. I think that it sounds weird to say, because everyone’s so uncomfortable with the concept of death. Exploring that subject, talking to people and trying to get more comfortable produces so much beauty and presence and magic that people are really scared to find, because it can be so awkward. But I’ve had a lot of growth from confronting death.
How has this experience changed your perspective on time?
We experience time linearly, but we see that timeline as something that just goes and goes and goes — we don’t really think about the end. That’s more how my perspective on time has changed. I’m closer to the idea that time can be finite and limited. And to make the most out of it, and soak it up, and try and feel it as it’s passing as much as we can, because we really don’t know how much time we have. And so I think the best thing that we can do is to focus on learning to feel it when it’s here.
As a professor of English literature, Mary L. Dudy’s conversations with Shakespeare required her to unwind centuries of scholarly work. As a writer, Caroline Morris grapples with how we communicate today and in conversation with the past. Read more about them or this series of interviews about time.