Like many Black women, actress Tia Mowry has lost people she loves to cancer. Moreover, she had her own breast cancer scare last year when doctors found an abnormality during a routine mammogram.
“I was scared; I was overwhelmed,” she said in a sit-down interview with Word In Black. “I ended up getting a biopsy, and everything ended up turning out fine. But I do know that’s not the story for everyone.”
Black people are more likely to die from breast and prostate cancer than any other racial group, according to 2025 findings by the American Cancer Society.
These mortality disparities, paired with personal experiences, have inspired Mowry to host a new video series called “Rewrite the Recipe,” launching Nov. 24. In the episodes, the actress, who calls food her love language, joins cancer survivors and advocates in the kitchen to talk through family recipes and their experiences with breast and prostate cancer.
“There were tears; there was laughter,” she reflects. “We’re in the kitchen. We’re cutting up some collards – there’s some catfish that’s being fried, and there we are having some intimate conversations around what’s sometimes a hard topic, which is cancer.”
The series is part of the Changes the Odds initiative, a partnership between the American Cancer Society and Pfizer.
Mowry’s goal, she says, is to encourage Black families to treat good food and good company at the dinner table as an opportunity to be vulnerable about their family history with cancer.
“It is really important for us to know our family history and our family’s connection to cancer and share it with our doctors so that we can get the proper screenings,” she says.
The series airs on cancer.org/changetheodds. The site also includes a directory of U.S. facilities offering free or low-cost cancer screenings.
Watch a preview of the series in the Word In Black video above.
