‘Days of Our Lives’ Star Suzanne Rogers Reveals Cancer Diagnosis

Suzanne Rogers has seen her fair share of drama for the past 52 years as Maggie Horton on Days of our Lives, but she recently faced the biggest challenge of her life after she was diagnosed with cancer this past summer.

It all began when Rogers felt that something “wasn’t quite right” and made an appointment with her doctor. Though she had been routinely getting colonoscopies, she was sent for another. Once a surgeon saw the results, “He said, ‘I want you to have an MRI and I want you to have a PET scan and I’m going to do a biopsy,’” Rogers shares. “And the minute he said that I knew that it was something more.”

She went in for another procedure and when she came to after it, her fears were confirmed by the doctor: It was Stage II colorectal cancer. “He said, ‘You have cancer and you have to start treatment,’” Rogers recalls. “It was all a shock. I mean, I think I was in a shock for several days because I take pretty good care of myself. But he said, ‘It’s a good thing you caught it in time.’”

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Ready to tackle the journey ahead, Rogers wrapped at Days on June 13 and began treatment three days later. “It was radiation every day and chemo every day for six weeks and it was tough,” she says. “It was tough knowing you had to do it five days a week and then you had off Saturday and Sunday. I thoroughly enjoyed my weekends because I didn’t have to go to and see a doctor. I was so tired of seeing doctors.”

Fortunately, the show’s summer schedule worked in her favor. The soap took a six-week hiatus that made her absence from the set less noticeable. “I was able to keep it under wraps and then the show took that break, so it wasn’t necessary to get into it all then,” she explains. “It helped me because it gave me even more time to chill and to get myself healthy.”

With no family in the Los Angeles area, Rogers turned to her good pal Sunie Ostermann and her on-screen daughter Linsey Godfrey (Sarah Horton) for help. “It was scary,” she admits. “When I had to go see a doctor, one of them would go with me because you get to a point where once they say cancer, you don’t hear anything else.”

Godfrey, a cancer survivor herself, was a steady source of comfort. “I had to have an infusion, and it takes about an hour and a half, so Linsey sat there with me and held my hand while I was having it,” Rogers relays. “We would go out to lunch or dinner with Paul Telfer [Xander Kiriakis] and Linsey’s daughter, Aleda. I knew I could count on them, so it was a lovely experience on and off the set. We really feel like a family.”

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The kindness extended across the cast. “Nobody knew and then Linsey said, ‘Look, can I tell a few people, just to give you a call and say hi so you don’t feel like you’re so alone?’” Rogers shares. “Mary Beth [Evans, Kayla Johnson] called. Stephen [Nichols, Steve Johnson] called me, and it was so lovely to get a call from him. And Greg Rikaart [Leo Stark] stayed in touch, as did AnnaLynne [McCord, Cat Greene], and my makeup person at the show.”

Behind the scenes, the producers offered support and reassurance that the role would be waiting for her when she was better. “I got calls from Ken [Corday, executive producer] and Noel [Maxam, coexecutive producer] and Sara [Peterson, producer] and they all said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing, take care of yourself, get yourself well. That’s the most important thing. We are here.’”

Rogers completed treatment on July 31 and is now making her way back to Salem. “I’m feeling really good,” she enthuses. “I start back to work next week, so we’ll see how that goes. Now, I’m feeling anxious like I do any time I get scripts because I want to do my very best and you don’t want to hold up anybody. So that’s the only anxiousness I feel. It’s not because of my illness, let’s put it that way.”

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Even so, her recovery hasn’t been without its challenges. “The biggest thing is that I was tired because that’s not like me,” Rogers explains. “I have a lot of energy all the time, so it really kind of shook me thinking, ‘Am I going to get my energy back?’ And it seems like it’s coming back. It’s not 100% yet, but I feel better. Today I feel really good, and that’s happening more and more than the other way around, so I’m really happy about that.”

Rogers notes that she will look the same when Maggie is back on screen. “I didn’t lose my hair,” she discloses. “I guess because I was taking the chemo pills. I’m sure there’ll be people that are saying, ‘Well, she didn’t really have cancer,’ but you know what? I really don’t care what people say. I know what I’ve gone through and I’ve come out on the other side, so that’s all I care about.”

And while it’s currently airing, Days is 10 months ahead in production, so there will be a stretch of time in 2026 where Maggie isn’t on the canvas. “At least the audience will know why,” she says. “My sister, who checks in with me two or three times a day, said there’s been some things on Facebook that said that I had retired and I had left the show, and none of that is true. I don’t want to upset anybody, but I want them to know what’s going on.”

Now, with a positive prognosis, Rogers is focused on gratitude. “It’s so funny because I used to worry about some silly things,” she reflects. “And when you go through this, it kind of takes you a while to say, ‘OK, well, this is what I have, and I will do my very best to fight it and to get through it.’ And that’s what I did. The prayers and the good wishes from my friends and my family helped me stay positive and stay on top of it and beat this.”

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