Rita Wilson has recalled the two things she asked her husband, Tom Hanks, to do for her if she died, after receiving her breast cancer diagnosis in 2015.
The 69-year-old actor and singer was open about her treatment at the time, undergoing a bilateral mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, before sharing last year that she was “10 years cancer free.”
Wilson, who’s been married to Hanks since 1988, looked back on her health journey on Tuesday during an on-stage conversation with Demi Moore in New York to discuss her sixth studio album, Sound of a Woman.
The Sleepless in Seattle star told Moore: “I said to Tom, ‘Okay, if something happens and I go first, I just have two requests. And one is that you should be sad for a very, very long time.”
“The second one was throw me a party. I want it to be a celebration of life,” she continued, according to People. “I want it to be about people telling stories and joy and remembering me in that way. And I think people, a lot of people want that, you know? I think there’s room for that.”
She noted that her conversation with Hanks inspired her 2019 song, “Throw Me a Party.”
“The song … it came out of this, this story I’ve told before, but if you haven’t heard it, it was, when you get the diagnosis and you’re like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I hope I’m still here, you know, in a few years.’”
“I’m here. Yay!” she added to the crowd at the intimate event.
Wilson has previously reflected on the highs and lows of her breast cancer diagnosis. In March 2025, she shared an emotional message on Instagram to celebrate her “10 years of being cancer-free.”
“10 years. And I am so deeply grateful,” she said in her video. “I'm so thankful to my doctors. To my friends, to my family. The gratitude is overwhelming. Didn't always feel this way. You know that, anybody who's going through [it, or] who's survived knows that it's an up and down, like, hamster wheel. But then you get to this point.”
“I don’t talk about it much, but I think it’s important to celebrate good news. I am thinking of anybody out there who might be going through some difficulties.”
