Beyoncé’s mother Tina Knowles has revealed her secret cancer battle in a candid on-camera interview.
The 71-year-old Beyoncé’s mother Tina Knowles has said she was recently diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer after doctors discovered two tumors during her mammogram appointment.
The fashion designer, who is the mother of Beyoncé, 43, and Solange, 38, with ex-husband Mathew Knowles, 72, said her daughters supported her through the horrific time by lifting her spirits at hospital appointments.
‘I was nervous,’ she told Gayle King on CBS Mornings. ‘And so they started just joking with me.’
Tina Knowles said Solange also played a viral video about the word ‘demure’ to cheer her up at one moment.
‘I start laughing. I get out of my head. … Then I said, ‘I’m just so happy that y’all are here.’
‘And I thought about the song ‘Walk With Me,’ which they used to sing all the time,’ she said.
Tina Knowles said Solange and her niece Angie Beyince sang the song to her before one of her surgeries.
‘It’s about God walking with you into something and protecting you,’ Knowles said through tears. ‘And I went in there feeling just like God has got me.’
Knowles added that although she’s recovered from the cancer since, she suffered significant hurdles along the way.
She told CBS Mornings she contracted a post-surgical infection so bad that she almost bailed on Glamour’s 2024 Women of the Year event in October.
Knowles said Beyonce in particular urged her to rest rather than attend the event – but she pushed through because it was important to her.
‘A lot of my life, I just refused to be recognized. I would never take an award. I would never want the attention to me … and this was my saying, “I deserve this,”‘ she said.
Knowles also revealed that her cancer might have been caught sooner if she hadn’t delayed her mammogram appointment.
Doctors told her that if she maintained regular screenings, which are scheduled every one to two years for women over the age of 55, the cancer may have been caught at stage zero instead of stage one.
Stage zero is when the cancer has not spread beyond the breast tissue, per the American Cancer Society.
Knowles was seen with Beyonce, her husband Jay-Z and their daughter Blue Ivy at Mufasa: The Lion King premiere in Los Angeles last December.
The family appeared to be in the holiday spirit at the glitzy event after Jay-Z had just hit back against claims he gang-raped a 13-year-old girl with Diddy.
Knowles also became embroiled in the controversy after she appeared to like an Instagram post reporting about the sordid accusations against her son-in-law.
She told fans she was ‘hacked’ and did not like the post of her own accord.
‘I was Hacked! As you all know I do not play about my family. So if you see something uncharacteristic of me just know it is not me’ she wrote on her own Instagram.
The post liked by her account was shared via @abc7Chicago and was captioned: ‘Breaking news: Jay-Z, Diddy named in lawsuit alleging rape of girl, 13.’
Jay-Z has denied the attack the victim claims took place at a VMA’s afterparty in September 2000, while an unidentified female celebrity watched.
The anonymous victim previously referred to Jay-Z as ‘Celebrity A’ in the bombshell filing, with the female star accused of watching anonymized as ‘Celebrity B.’
This made Jay-Z the first celebrity to be named alongside Diddy in one of the myriad lawsuits filed against Combs. Both rappers have denied all allegations.