Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen is revealing today that two years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent a procedure to remove the tumor.
Thankfully, the filmmaker is now “fully recovered and fully functional,” he tells Deadline.
The knight of the British realm is making a speech this afternoon to U.K. lawmakers at the House Of Commons to launch a new campaign for charity Prostate Cancer Research.
The surgery meant that the start of filming on his exceptional wartime feature Blitz was delayed for two weeks.
McQueen then returned to work without divulging to over two hundred cast and crew the reason for his absence. The director says that he kept his medical operation secret because he didn’t want his health issues to be a distraction to those working on the movie.
Today’s date, November 14, has a special significance for the filmmaker, because it’s two years exactly since doctors removed the cancerous tumor.
Before McQueen addressed attendees today in the House of Commons Terrace Pavilion, he agreed to break the deeply personal news to Deadline in the hope that it will encourage others to take action as he did.
The 12 Years a Slave director explains that after his father, Philbert McQueen, died of prostate cancer in 2006, “I knew there could be a hereditary situation whereby I could develop prostate cancer.” So he began having regular MRI scans and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) checks, plus he was “tested all the time, of course, for films and whatnot.”
During one such examination in 2022, with Blitz in pre-production and with a start date set, his doctors “discovered that I had developed this cancer, this tumor, a small tumor, and therefore obviously caught it very, very, early. I delayed the shoot by two weeks and then had the procedure.”
McQueen was in hospital for two days and worked from his bed. Then he went home for twelve days. “I was just doing stuff in bed on the computer, working, emailing and whatever, but I kept it private at that stage,” because he didn’t want cast and crew to be “concerned.”
And then “two weeks after the procedure I was on set shooting” the movie, which is a Lammas Park, Working Title and New Regency production for Apple, with Saoirse Ronan, brilliant young newcomer Elliott Heffernan, Paul Weller, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham , Kathy Burke, Benjamin Clémentine and many others.
Steve McQueen on set during ‘Blitz’ shoot. Photo courtesy of Apple
The film, powerful popular art for the people, is now in cinemas and will be available on Apple TV+ from November 22.
Only his mother, sister and close family were told about the health scare. “And that was it. I really just wanted to get on with the job. And that’s kind of like who I am. I’m a ‘get on with it’ kind of person,” he says matter of factly.
Thinking how Blitz is set in wartime London when the city, particularly the East End Docklands district was being bombed nightly for eight months straight in 1940 by Hitler’s Luftwaffe, the wartime ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ slogan seems apt in relation to his situation and directness in dealing with it.
“Oh, you could say that,” McQueen says smiling. “But it’s just a case of just getting on with it.”
McQueen says that the early detection was the key. “The cancer’s gone and that’s down to early detection. Early detection means virtually a hundred percent success rate. Again, it’s a cancer that if you detect early, it’s totally survivable.”
Prostate cancer affects a lot of Black men, my own father died from it over three decades ago, but great medical strides in detection have been made since then.
One in eight men will get prostate cancer, says McQueen, quoting Prostate Cancer Research statistics. “But one in four Black men will get prostate cancer, and one in twelve Black men will die of prostate cancer. So for me, it was about preempting it. The fact that I was preempting the situation for years was, again, my saviour in that way. So, just preempt it and get it early,” he declares.
He says that he took it upon himself to get tested annually because of his family history.
And he’s fully behind Prostate Cancer Research’s Proactive For Your Prostate campaign, and its Everyman A Scan slogan, launched with the help of U.K parliamentary lawmakers and members of the prostate cancer community to raise awareness about the importance of nationwide regular screening.
“What’s happening is that men are being left to their own devices to navigate this on their own,” he says.
They shouldn’t wait, he urges.
McQueen reflects on the tragedy of his father dying from prostate cancer and how that made him “want to know everything about it”, and how he wanted to be prepared, “because I knew that if it did come my way, if I did get it, it could be dealt with in an extremely effective way, and that’s the end of it.”
He went quiet for a moment as he tried to find words to express his debt to his father. “In some ways, you could say, my dad saved my life because unfortunately he died of it.”
Pausing again to gather his thoughts, McQueen adds: ”Just like your father isn’t here because of it, because your father, like my father, is one of the one in 12 Black men who unfortunately will die of it, if not detected early.”
Every year, more than 55,000 men in the U.K. are diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 12,000 men in the U.K. die from the disease, according to figures provided by Prostate Cancer research. Those with a family history of prostate cancer are also at a higher risk of developing it.
McQueen’s straightforwardness is refreshing in the sense that generally men, all men, not just Black men, can be fearful, for various reasons, in seeking medical advice.
The filmmaker who made the no-holds barred 2011 movie Shame, starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, cuts through my British reserve, laughs and says that he’s “fully recovered and fully functional, and that includes downstairs.”
McQueen’s candid comments, I imagine, will be most helpful to those men who fear the idea of being checked.
Saoirse Ronan, Elliott Heffernan and Paul Weller in ‘Blitz’. Photo courtesy of Apple
Apple TV
This reminds me of the short film McQueen made for the Male Cancer Awareness campaign in 2021 titled Embarrassed, created to help raise awareness of prostate cancer within the Black community.
The film, which urged regular screening, featured a short series of interviews with Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Micheal Ward and Morgan Freeman.
McQueen says that he recently shot a new short film for the Proactive for Your Prostrate campaign featuring David Harewood. It will be launched towards the end of November.
I also think the very idea of an Oscar garlanded director, and a major prize-winning artist to boot, speaking in such personal terms, not just to Deadline, but more importantly, to lawmakers of all hues in the House of Commons, will be enormously impactful in the U.K., the United States, Europe, Africa, and around the world.
It’s huge, in my view, that McQueen has spoken out. I feel sure lives will be saved.
And, again, Black men must pay attention, all men must pay attention.
Those in attendance at today’s parliamentary event gave weight to the seriousness of the topic. The gathering was co-hosted by David Lammy, the ruling Labour Party’s Foreign Secretary; James Cleverly, the former Foreign and Home Secretary, and Josh Babarinde, the Liberal Democrats Justice Spokesperson. They, along with McQueen and Prostate Cancer Research CEO Oliver Kemp, all prepared remarks for the Terrace Pavilion event. Also in attendance were celebrities including Gary Lineker, Claudia Winkelman and James Corden.
“The tragedy of this is no one has to die of it. That’s the tragedy,” McQueen says, hammering home the importance of early screenings.