Julia Louis-Dreyfus opens up on why she revealed her cancer diagnosis. The "very private" Veep star explained she had been forced to share the news after shooting was called off on the comedy series. ”I was kind of backed into a corner on that one because we had to shut our show down," Julia, 64, told Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast. ”It's funny how that worked out because normally I would not have done that. I'm very private.” The Emmy winner, who was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer in September 2017, revealed there was no way to conceal her illness from the public. ”We had to shut the show down, Veep, at the time for a year," she explained "Two hundred fifty people weren't going to be working, so I had to make a public thing about it.” However, Julia said, one upside to the fans learning of her condition was an outpouring of support, as well as people contacting her for advice. ”The good thing about doing that was that I did have this incredible experience of people reaching out to me asking me for, you know, asking me about my experience going through breast cancer, for advice.” "And I was able to help and there was something unbelievably comforting about being able to do that on the other side of this trauma.”