In 2012, Christine Handy learned that she had breast cancer. She was 41 years old. At the time, the modeling career she had started as a child was still thriving.
“My whole identity was kind of wrapped up in everything external, including external accolades and billboards and everything external to me,” Handy told Raquel Calhoun during a Q&A after TheWrap’s screening of her film, “Hello Beautiful.” “I realized with the cancer diagnosis that all of this had nothing to do with anything important. When you have nothing left, you have to rebuild yourself on something, so I rebuilt myself. Instead of serving my own interests, I decided to serve.”
She wrote a novel, “Walk Beside Me” in 2017, based on her experience as a breast cancer survivor. Today, this book has been adapted into a film written, directed and produced by Ziad H. Hamzeh and executive produced by Handy. The film was shot in just 18 days, starring Tricia Helfer as Willow Boutrous, a character inspired by Handy, and Tarek Bishara as Khalil, Willow’s husband.
The goal of the book and film, Handy said, was to counter the poisonous image of mean-spirited, traitorous women epitomized by Bravo’s “Real Housewives” franchise (at the height of its appeal when she was writing) and to counter the trend of “fear-based” media linked to cancer diagnoses. Handy wanted hope – and she wanted to share that hope with others.
“I had this little dream at the time that I could change this. I could show survival in a movie,” she said. “Every time I went to someone to talk about it, they said, ‘Yes, but you’re just a model. How are you going to do it?” Well, 13 years later – last week I celebrated my 13th cancer-free birthday – and here we are… I think sharing stories of hope can be very healing.
Hamzeh found this to be true of Handy’s book. “It wasn’t the typical novel that you read. It was a story. A real, true story,” he said. “I thought, ‘My God, if anyone can go through what this lady went through and survive and come back from the ashes like a phoenix to do so many wonderful things for the world, I have to know why. I must know the secret of what makes a human being so capable of this return.”
During the Q&A session, Bishara spoke about how the film came into her life around the time her father was diagnosed with cancer. “I’ve put him through chemotherapy over the last year, I would say, and he’s doing well right now, but it’s so interesting how the universe works,” Bishara said. “I don’t think I would have been the same kind of caregiver to my father if I hadn’t made this movie, if I hadn’t read his book, if I hadn’t played this character where I explored some versions of, ‘Hey, you don’t always have to be an angel. Hey, you don’t always have to do your best.” There may be times of anger, there may be times of frustration, there may be times when you don’t know what to do, or you feel confused, or you’re afraid.
Handy said she felt it was important not to “put together” her story or give in to shame or fear. “Hope is a muscle, but we have to use it,” she said. “We have to practice it, and I hope people look at this and say, ‘I’m going to focus on hope and not fear,’ because there’s so much fear in our world, and there’s so much fear in a diagnosis.”
Watch the full conversation below.
