The Crown’s Olivia Williams reveals she will never be cancer-free after illness dismissed as ‘being menopausal’

Olivia Williams has revealed that she will never be cancer-free after a rare tumour was repeatedly misdiagnosed.

Williams, 56, has had a notable career on stage and screen, including playing Camilla Parker Bowles in the final two seasons of Netflix’s The Crown.

She also appeared in two episodes of Friends as Felicity, a bridesmaid at Ross and Emily’s wedding.

‘If someone had f*****g well diagnosed me in the four years I’d been saying I was ill, when they told me I was menopausal or had irritable bowel syndrome or was crazy, then one operation possibly could have cleared the whole thing and I could describe myself as cancer-free, which I cannot now ever be,’ The Crown star told The Times.

The Sixth Sense actress explained that by the time doctors removed the tumor, it had already spread to her liver, ‘which, as anyone involved in the cancer life knows, is the worst news.’

She added that she now gets ‘zapped by microwave ablation’ to treat recurring metastasized cancer cells in her body.

‘We’ve been playing whack-a-mole every time they appear,’ she said.

‘I go in like a puppy with this optimistic, bright face and then they give me bad news,’ she told the outlet while recounting her regular checkups. 

She continued: ‘And it’s like, oh my God, I fell for it again. They’ve found new metastases pretty well either just before Christmas or in the middle of a summer holiday.

‘Then, for three years in a row, they started appearing too close to major blood vessels to zap. So there was a period when we were just sitting and watching them grow, which is a horrible feeling.’

In the interview, Williams recalls enduring a myriad symptoms from aching limbs to chronic diarrhoea as she visited doctors in three countries over a four-year period.

Doctors initially suspected the autoimmune disease lupus or that she was perimenopausal, but both were ruled out after testing.

Finally, a UK rheumatologist discovered Williams had a cancerous tumour in her pancreas.

Williams has undergone multiple surgeries to remove the tumour, but because of the late detection, it has metastasised to her liver. She now takes medication and undergoes regular scans.

She has also been treated four times with targeted internal radiotherapy.

’It’s supposed to buy me maybe a year, maybe two or three years, of freedom from treatment,’ she said. ‘In the best-case scenario, it would have made (the metastases) disappear, but that didn’t happen.’

The actress, who has two daughters aged 20 and 17 with playwright Rhashan Stone, is currently supporting the London Marathon’s charity of the year, Pancreatic Cancer UK, in order to help generate funding for the cause.

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