Julia Morris found out her husband had cancer. But she couldn't move her face.

Julia Morris is a force of nature. A woman who gets things done. She’s downright hilarious, and someone who has no qualms telling it like it is. A chat with her is like a conversation with your frankest, funniest friend.

This week, on No Filter, the comedian/host/actress/all of the things  sat down with Mia Freedman for a startlingly honest interview about all manner of things.

Things like peri-menopause: “No-one talks about it, because they’ll sound old, and there’s nothing worse than being old in our business.

Things like miscarriage: “I was pitching a pregnancy TV show at the time.”

Things like her children being “papped”: “[My husband] was at the supermarket checkout… and he sees photos of the children in their bathing suits [in a magazine]. I was so furious I couldn’t even speak about it.”

And things like the moment she found out her husband Dan had breast cancer, and she had just had a face-full of Botox.

Listen to that moment, here: 

Describing how after a huge year of filming House Husbands, together with a big tour, her husband, Dan, had booked in to have a hernia removed. On her first day off.

“I was like, ‘I’m gonna kill you…like, really? The first day I’ve got off and now I’m gonna have to nurse you back to health. If I’d had a knife, I would have cut it out myself’…

“Because I was so furious, a friend of mine had said, ‘I think you need some Botox,’, I’m like ‘Oh my God, really? I’m a comic!’ and she said, ‘well, it’s just that, you don’t look like the mother of a five-year-old on that show’ and I said, ‘I am the mother of a five-year-old!'”.

After talking to Dan about it, she went for it. And then came Dan’s appointment to remove his hernia.

Julia and Dan. Image: Getty. 

"He also had this lump that he'd had checked many different times... it was a fatty deposit behind his nipple. He had a biopsy, he had a mammogram, he had a ultrasound, over a period of about a year and a half, he'd been checking it, [and it was] nothing don't worry, and when the surgeon [removing his hernia] found out... he said 'I don't like that it's even there, I'm going to take it out.'" Julia says. (Post continues after gallery.)

As fate would have it, the lump turned out to be breast cancer, a condition that accounts for less than one per cent of all cancers in men. And hearing the news was one of the biggest shocks of Julia's life.

"You go into this... like your blood is all flowing through you, like you go into the cone of silence from Get Smart. I remember us catching each other's eye, like 'Holllllllly f**k.' It was such a shock... like am I going to lose my husband?" Julia says.

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"And then, we get into the car, and Dan said, 'Baby, you were amazing in there, like you were incredible. And I said, 'I can't move my face!' He couldn't tell any of my distress, because I couldn't move my face at all. I looked amazing through it. I thought, 'He may be suffering with the cancer, but I look amazing.'" Julia says.

Within a day of hearing the news, Dan was back on the operating table, having the cancer removed. And Julia says that the moral of the story is that early detection is the key.

"If somebody says 'that's nothing' just keep an eye on it just in case, you're there every day, have a look." she says.

Listen to the entire, brilliant interview, here: 

And for more episodes, find us on iTunes, download the Mamamia Podcast app, or search for No Filter in your favourite podcast app.

Love Julia Morris? You can have lunch with her, find out how here.