Marisa Abela opens up about ‘scariest’ part of cancer diagnosis

Industry star Marisa Abela has opened up about having surgery to remove a tumour after being diagnosed with cancer, and said the “scariest thing” was not knowing whether she was going to speak again.

In 2020, the actress was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2020. She had an eight-hour operation to remove the tumour, plus a total thyroidectomy and around 19 lymph nodes removed from her neck.

Speaking on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast, Abela, now 29, has expressed how her biggest concern was not being able to talk after the operation, and has reflected on how “bleak” she felt at the time.

She was diagnosed with the disease during the Covid-19 pandemic, after first going to the hospital because she thought she had the illness, due to suffering from similar symptoms such as brain fog.

She said: “Obviously you never expect to get to be told that you have cancer at 23. The aftermath of the whole thing was scary to me. I knew I was ill, I could tell something was really wrong and then I just switched into, like, ‘get it out, get it out’ mode, and: ‘Am I going to be able to speak again?’”

She added: “That was the scariest thing, because they had to go through a lot of nerves to get to my thyroid, and one of the things was I had to sign a form that said if they cut the nerve that’s attached to my voice box, I’m not going to sue them or whatever.

“I remember when I woke up, the first thing I did was go, ‘maaa’, because I just wanted to make sure I could talk.”

Abela said she was also worried about the scar on her neck, and whether it would affect her work as an actress.

The Back To Black star describes receiving her diagnosis as “very scary”, and said: “It was on my thyroid and I was aware that that was potentially going to cause hormonal issues throughout my life. That was very scary. Just the aftermath of the whole thing was scary to me. It was an eight-hour surgery and it was in the middle of Covid, so I had to go in on my own. I was put in the burns unit for recovery because there weren’t enough beds in the ICU, so 2020 was bleak for me.”

Abela said her husband, actor Jamie Bogyo, was an “immense help” through her diagnosis. The couple got married last year and she says of him: “He is the most supportive person in every way.”

Marisa won a Bafta for best actress in 2025, for her role in the hit BBC drama Industry as young graduate Yasmin Kara-Hanani. She has also appeared in films Barbie (2023), She Is Love (2022), and starred in the Amy Winehouse biopic Back To Black (2024).

The full interview with Marisa Abela is available on the How to Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast.