Comedian Jeff Ross gives health update after cancer diagnosis: 'I just had my chemo port removed'

Raechal ShewfeltWed, April 8, 2026 at 3:54 AM UTC

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Jeff Ross in NYC in 2025Credit: Bruce Glikas/Getty

Comedian Jeff Ross says he's doing beautifully after recovering from colon cancer.

"My health is 100 percent," he told Terry Gross on Tuesday's edition of NPR's Fresh Air. "I just had my chemo port removed. It's really important for people to know that I'm doing okay — I'm doing better than okay."

He also insisted people "don't worry about me; at least, right now, I feel very fortunate. And to the people listening who are going through chemo: You can do it. You can do it."

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Ross, 60, discussed his struggles with alopecia, too. He was asked what his fans thought when he began having hair loss.

"You know, it's a great question. It's something I have barely come to terms with," Ross said. "I had this big, bushy ʼfro. I was making jokes about it every night. And then, all within a few weeks, everything fell out. And then if that wasn't weird enough, my eyelashes and my eyebrows. So I just looked so differently. Whatever celebrity, if I was going to get noticed, it was all gone. So it was very rattling emotionally. And I was trying to put, like, makeup on my eyebrows. I was wearing hats and sunglasses. And I was saying I was doing it for a role."

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He didn't like the idea that people would think he was "sick or weak," especially because it's difficult to truly laugh at that person.

Fans didn't hear Ross speak about the condition until after Will Smith slapped Ross's friend Chris Rock at the Oscars in March 2022. Rock had joked about Jada Pinkett Smith's lack of hair — she also struggles with alopecia —earlier in the evening.

Jeff Ross performs in Hollywood in 2019Credit: Amanda Edwards/Getty

"It devastated me, and I wasn't the one getting hit," Ross said. "I was the one watching from a hotel room in Atlanta. And my girlfriend was like, 'Oh, are they doing a bit?' And I shook my head. And I started almost tearing up. I knew it wasn't a bit. I knew Chris wouldn't do a bit like that. I'd worked with Chris for years. I understood that Will Smith snapped right away and hit Chris Rock, who handled it like a man, like a grown-up. He went on with the show."

Ross's one-man, Broadway show, based on his own life, called Take a Banana for the Ride, is streaming on Netflix.

Listen to his full conversation with Gross above, including his by-request roast of the NPR host.

on Entertainment Weekly

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