“Dancing” Contestant Valerie Harper Feels She’s ‘Winning’ Fight with Cancer
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Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — Valerie Harper refuses to let her battle with terminal brain cancer interfere with her life.
The 74-year-old former Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda actress on Wednesday was named one of the new cast members of Dancing with the Stars. She tells ABC News Radio she’s currently receiving treatment at a Los Angeles hospital and is “making progress,” which her doctors hadn’t expected.
Harper, who has been paired with pro dancer Tristan MacManus, says, “I’m fighting with the disease for supremacy in this body and I’m winning right now.”
In a separate interview with ABC News, Harper says her cancer is close to remission, but not quite there yet.
Another Dancing with the Stars competitor, Jack Osbourne, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis over a year ago. He’s hoping to use the show as a platform to raise awareness of the disease.
The 27-year-old Osbourne, whose sister Kelly Osbourne was a contestant on the show in 2009, comments to ABC News Radio, “I feel an obligation to a degree to let people know about the disease and to try and get people to give as much money to research as possible, because it’s a dreadful disease and it doesn’t really end well.”
One of the biggest names in the new cast is MTV reality star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. She promises her moves in the ballroom will be much more refined than the ones we saw from her in the clubs on Jersey Shore. She maintains, “It’s totally different. When I’m in the club I’m drunk, fallin’ down, it’s a hot mess. Then ballroom is beautiful and you have to have technique and have fun.”
Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” has a more complicated perspective on ballroom dancing, and in particular the paso doble. This is how he explained the physics of the paso doble to ABC News Radio: “Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion…but along with that you want to conserve not just momentum, you want to conserve momentum when you’re going in a circle. Angular momentum.”
The 17th season of Dancing with the Stars gets underway on ABC on September 16.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio