The Great Gatsby’s Sara Chase Speaks Out About Cancer Diagnosis: ‘I'm Living My Greatest Dream and My Nightmare’

“When my doctor told me the diagnosis, I said, ‘I promise you if I get through this, I will speak about it.’” Sara Chase is already making good on that promise—a show of faith that her doctor will hold up the other end of the bargain.

The diagnosis she’s referring to is tubal cancer, or cancer of the fallopian tubes—a piece of news the Great Gatsby performer kept to her inner personal and professional circles before deciding to share it publicly in an interview with Broadway.com Managing Editor Beth Stevens on The Broadway Show. Of course, the time to keep information like that private gets cut short when you’re expected on a Broadway stage eight times a week performing at peak levels in one of the season’s most high-energy musicals.

“I keep saying I'm living my greatest dream and my nightmare at the same time,” Chase told Stevens from her Manhattan apartment. Broadway, naturally, has been the dreamy half of this chapter. Chase made her Broadway debut 10 years ago as a supporting character in First Date—a romcom-style musical that starred Krysta Rodriguez and Zachary Levi. Shortly after, she joined the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt universe, winning fans and satisfying her craving for comedy as mole woman Cyndee Pokorny. “Musical theater and comedy are tied for my two loves,” she said, mentioning the sketch comedy theater Upright Citizens Brigade as her primary training ground. When Gatsby came around, it was a chance to spend some time with her other great love.

“I missed singing so much that I was happy to do it,” said Chase, remembering her reaction to Gatsby director Marc Bruni offering her the role of Myrtle Wilson for the fall 2023 world premiere at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse (she had worked with Bruni prior on a musical adaptation of Roman Holiday). “I was excited to work that muscle again because it’s kind of scary being on stage and singing. I thought that was a lower stakes way to dip my toe back into musical theater.” The show had a monthlong run from October to November, 2023; in January, the production announced its plans to move to Broadway; and by the end of March, they were up and running at the Broadway Theatre.

“It was very fast,” said Chase. “I honestly did not think I would have any involvement with it past Paper Mill just because, like I said, my only goal was to try to get back into musical theater and let people know that I still sing.” That modest goal became a rapid-fire Broadway homecoming.

In the middle of the whirlwind, she decided it was finally time to address a looming health concern. “Right before rehearsal started, I had my fallopian tubes out preventatively,” Chase said of the brief window between Gatsby’s Paper Mill and Broadway runs. She knew she had the BRCA gene and a family history of cancer, so her doctor had recommended the surgery as a preemptive course of action. “I thought if I didn’t get it done now, it would be a year before Gatsby was over.”

During the second week of rehearsal, she got the call informing her that cancer was found in the fallopian tubes. Her first question was about the prognosis and next steps. Her doctor replied with a recommendation for a full hysterectomy and six rounds of chemotherapy. “And then of course my second question was, ‘Can I still do Gatsby?’” Chase and her doctor pulled out their calendars to make it work.

The show, at the time, was barreling toward its preview period, but Myrtle’s entrance, fortuitously, was not until scene five. It bought Chase three free days of tech rehearsal. “We scheduled the surgery on the first day of tech. I recovered for three days, and on the fourth day I went back to the theater and no one knew.”

She had told her principal castmates Jeremy Jordan, Eva Noblezada, Samantha Pauly, Noah J. Ricketts and John Zdrojeski. “We had gotten so close at the Paper Mill that it would be weird to hide something like that from them,” she said. “I was carrying a giant secret, but at least they knew that.” The stage manager and assistant costume designer also had to be kept in the loop. “I had to explain why I was a little more expanded.” She did, however, keep the information from the creative team until April 26, the day after the show’s official opening. She informed the rest of the company the day after her first treatment, knowing her absences were about to become noticeably frequent.

Speaking openly about a cancer diagnosis is always a multi-layered decision, but a particularly complex one when your livelihood depends on industries as fickle as theater and television where stamina and flexibility are prized commodities. Some of her peers—including her former First Date castmate Krysta Rodriguez, who blogged about her breast cancer treatments following her 2014 diagnosis, and the late Marin Mazzie, who spoke openly about her three-year battle with ovarian cancer—share their stories with the world. Others choose instead to make their impact more quietly. One such performer, whose anonymity Chase respectfully maintained, gave her some of the greatest advice she’s received so far: “She just said, ‘Take everything moment to moment. I don’t even mean show to show. I mean one mark to the next mark on stage. One line to the next line.’ That has been so helpful.”

Chase could have taken either path, but she’s decided that spreading awareness and information was her biggest priority. “Truth be told, it was recommended that I get my fallopian tubes out a year or two earlier and I didn’t do it,” she said. “That’s why you’ve got to follow the guidelines. I hope me telling my story will help other people not have to go through this.”

Unlike breast cancer, which you can screen for with mammograms or MRIs, tubal cancer has no diagnostic test and is difficult to detect in its early stages. Even with her delay in following doctor’s orders, Chase saved her own life by knowing her family history and taking the advised proactive steps. “You need to warn people that there’s recommendations for a reason,” her doctor urged her to share. Adding her own voice to the mix, she said, “If you know what you can do to help yourself, you should do it.”

And while she advocates for her health off stage, she continues to claim her space on stage, holding on to the “dream” in the moments the “nightmare” doesn’t overwhelm her mind or body. “It’s not easy, doing both things at the same time,” she admitted. “I just came from recording the cast album, which was a high, but then I’m also starting to lose my hair—which is such a weird day.

“But we can do hard things,” she said. “And we can only do hard things with the help of other people.”

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