Kelly Ripa is reflecting on her final conversation with Shannen Doherty.
During a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, the talk show host shared that Doherty was very aware that she didn’t have much time left, given her years-long struggles with cancer. Still, that didn’t stop Ripa from trying to play matchmaker for the Beverly Hills, 90210 actress — something that the two discussed on Ripa’s podcast on June 25.
“I always had an idea in my mind as to who might be a good match with Shannen,” Ripa, 53, told the outlet. “But the last conversation, she actually said to me, you know, ‘I’m kind of a tough sell, because I don’t have a lot of time left.'”
In the episode, which aired a little over two weeks before Doherty died, the Charmed actress told Ripa, “I think it’s hard for somebody like me, in my personal opinion, because it’s hard to go into dating someone when you know that they might have an expiration date. So I think I’m a very hard sell.”
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Ripa, who disagreed with Doherty on the podcast, told ET that she found the actress’s death to be “painful.”
“We’re the same age, we grew up together, and I always thought that she got the rawest deal of anyone in show business,” she explained. “And I still believe that, I stand by that. And I just really adored her. Every experience I ever had with her was so positive.”
“She’s a generous human being,” Ripa continued. “I felt very crushed that she seemed to know that her time was very, very limited, but I will say that she was telling me about her treatments and it was so brutal and painful… it sounds very glib, but just the fact that she’s no longer in physical pain provides, I think, everyone that knew and loved her with a little peace.”
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Doherty died on July 13, 2024 at age 53 nearly a decade after she was diagnosed with cancer. The actress first received her diagnosis in 2015 and spoke candidly to PEOPLE in November 2023 about her Stage 4 breast cancer, which had by then spread to her bones, saying at the time that she didn’t “want to die.”
“I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better,” she told PEOPLE. “I’m just not — I’m not done.”
It was crucial for the actress to prove that people with cancer could still live full lives and make meaningful contributions, as she proved time and again, appearing in TV projects like BH90210, List of a Lifetime and Riverdale, and launching her Let’s Be Clear podcast in December 2023.
“People just assume that it means you can’t walk, you can’t eat, you can’t work. They put you out to pasture at a very early age — ‘You’re done, you’re retired,’ and we’re not,” she told PEOPLE in 2023. “We’re vibrant, and we have such a different outlook on life. We are people who want to work, embrace life and keep moving forward.”
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In February, Doherty raved about her friendship with Ripa and the support she had lent her overtime, including offering to play matchmaker during one of her appearances on Live with Kelly and Mark.
“Kelly is awesome because I just saw her when I did her show and at the commercial break, she was like, ‘Are you ready? Are you ready to date? Are you ready for a boyfriend? I’m going to find you someone,’” Doherty recalled. “She started asking me, ‘Like what’s your list? What do you need?’ She was like, ‘Oh, I think I got somebody in mind.’”
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“I was like, dude, just text me and you can,” she added. “You’re one hundred percent the right person to start setting me up. I’m fine with that.”
