Julia Louis-Dreyfuss rocked the industry when she revealed her breast cancer diagnoses days after winning an Emmy Award. Now she’s opening up as to why she decided to do it so publicly. 

“Originally, I’ll be honest with you, something like this journey I’d been on, I normally wouldn’t share such a private thing publicly,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “I knew it would get out there because I knew we had to shut down production [on Veep] for a number of months in order to accommodate my situation.”

She added, “So then I thought, ‘Well, I’m just going to embrace this and attack it and try to do it with a sense of humor.’ I was really pleased with the reaction.”

Julia shared her diagnoses and her journey through chemotherapy on social media. Thankfully, she had surgery soon after and reportedly felt “ready to rock.” Last summer, she started shooting the seventh and final season of her hit show Veep. 

We love you, Julia!