Last year on the Today Show, actor, singer and Celebrity Jeopardy champion Jackie Tohn talked about her Jewish parents, Alan and Bella, their Florida retirement community, and her love for mah jongg while promoting season two of “Nobody Wants This.”
This week, she returned to the show to yes, gab about season of three of “Nobody Wants This,” which she finished shooting this month, but more importantly, to draw attention to an important health issue that affects a disproportionate amount of Ashkenazi Jewish women and some Jewish men, including Tohn’s own much beloved father (we’re obsessed with Alan, coverman!).
Tohn shared that last year in January, her father found lumps under his arms. Those lumps turned out to be metastatic carcinomas, and because his doctors couldn’t find a source for the cancer, they asked him to take a panel of hereditary genetic testing, a panel that showed that he was BRCA1 positive. For those who do not know what BRCA1 is, it’s a gene whose mutation can dramatically raise your risk for certain cancers, most notably breast cancer, though it can also increase the risk of ovarian and pancreatic cancer, as well as melanoma.
While we often think of these genes as passed down by mothers, it can be passed down from fathers as well, as Brad Hertz shared in this 2021 Kveller article. And that’s exactly what happened to Tohn; she mentioned her father’s diagnosis at a routine mammogram and got genetic testing in June 2025, and discovered she was also BRCA1 positive. At a meeting with a genetic counselor, she was told that she had an 85% chance of getting breast cancer.
“What’s crazy is when you get a diagnosis like this, you don’t know your options. It’s like someone giving you a single nail and being like, ‘Build the house, there’s a field,’ you’re like, huh? And so I said, ‘OK, let me put on my big girl pants, and I’m just doing this,'” Tohn told hosts Sheinelle Jones and Jenna Bush Hager.
The star found a medical team that she loved, and “on December 1, 2025, I got straight to reconstruction double mastectomy,” she told the audience.
Tohn wasn’t just there to share her own personal story — she wanted to raise awareness for the risk factors of BRCA. She explained that four factors make you more likely to be a carrier. The first three are “rare, young and multiple” — meaning if someone in your family had a rare cancer, if people in your family got diagnosed young with cancer and if multiple people in your family had cancer. And the fourth factor is one we’ve covered a lot here at Kveller since our founding: 1 in 40 Ashkenazi Jews, like Tohn and her father, are carriers of the BRCA gene.
Tohn encouraged those watching to get tested, partnering with Myriad Genetics — which discovered the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutation — to encourage testing for hereditary cancer risks, including BRCA1/2.
“I’m sharing my story because I am a Jewish woman in my 40s and no one had ever talked to me about BRCA,” Tohn shared in a press release. “I hope hearing about my experience encourages everyone to learn more about their family health history, start a conversation with their doctor, and explore a genetic test like the MyRisk Hereditary Cancer Test.”
The ad for Myriad’s MyRisk testing that features Tohn is full of haimish pictures of her and her family, at what appears to be her bat mitzvah, playing music with Alan and with her loved ones and family. There are adorable pictures with the cast of “Nobody Wants This” and with her partner (and show guest star) Joe Gillette. The ad even features the “Nobody Wants This” cast at Jackie’s “Boob Voyage” party ahead of her mastectomy (I’m obsessed) and her FaceTiming her mom from the hospital — because of course.
Tohn talks about how she is the type of person who does go to the doctor often and takes great care of her body because of her career, and yet she didn’t know about this mutation, and how the genetic testing was the key for her to hopefully lead the long healthy life she wants to (pu pu pu, kinehora!).
“I just hope my story ignites a fire in people to get themselves checked out,” Tohn says in the ad.
Amen. What a mitzvah, Jackie Tohn!
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