Nightbirde revealed she’s devastated to have had to drop out of “America’s Got Talent” to focus on her health as she appeared on Wednesday’s “Cuomo Prime Time”.
The 30-year-old, whose real name is Jane Marczewski, told Chris Cuomo of her cancer battle: “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve been curled up in a ball like a cocktail shrimp, having an A-plus pity party for myself, because it’s just been a bad, bad month. It’s been really, pretty devastating.”
Nightbirde announced earlier this week that she was stepping away from “AGT” after her audition went viral back in June when she moved Simon Cowell to tears, earning his Golden Buzzer.
The musician shared, “I’m not a quitter. So it was really, really hard for me to say that I couldn’t finish the show. I got shocking news less than a week ago about cancer regrowth that has taken over my lungs and liver. So my liver right now is mostly cancer. More cancer than liver in there right now. But like I said, I’m planning my future, not my legacy. Some people would call that blind denial. I prefer to call it rebellious hope. And I’m not stopping anytime soon.”
After quoting lyrics to a song she’s been working on, Nightbirde asked: “Don’t you want to see what happens if you don’t give up? Don’t you want to see what happens? And that’s what I keep saying to myself and that’s what I say to everyone watching tonight. Don’t you want to see what happens if you don’t give up?” to which Cuomo replied, “Have you always been like this?”
She then responded, “I don’t know. I think when you’re faced with so many blows to the gut in a row, like I have over the past several years, you find out what you’re made of in a sense, and you’re given the opportunity to choose what you want to become. So no, I don’t think I was always this way.”
Cuomo questioned Nightbirde if she ever asks “why me?”, with her telling the host: “I try not to occupy myself with questions that are too big for myself to answer. It’s a waste of time. You know, just because it’s a mystery doesn’t mean it’s the absence of meaning. Sometimes, the mystery means there is more meaning there than we can even understand and so I accept that and I let go of the questions because it’s too heavy.”
Cuomo then pointed out that she’s “breezing through things” and taking “things on that would cripple the rest of us.”
Nightbirde insisted, “Not denying the pain of today and not denying the hope of tomorrow. And when you go through something that is so devastating, makes no sense, there are no answers, you kind of have the choice, like, am I going to become bitter, or am I not? You do have a choice, you know.
“You do get to decide what becomes of you in a sense and, you know, I’ve decided in my most painful moments to keep my eyes open because it’s easier. It’s easier to close your eyes and to give up and forget it but there is so much beauty and poetry to be seen in the world if you’re willing to sign off on the pain that it takes to stay awake in the middle of something that hurts so bad, that’s all this is. Anybody can do it.”
The singer also thanked Cuomo for the money the show had helped raise on her GoFundMe page, with Cuomo telling her: “Well, I’ll tell you what, any way that we can help, you know we’re a call away. Anything you ever want to play for people, I’m happy to play it. As you know, that’s not what my show is about but you are worth deviation because I believe you’re exactly who we need to be. We all got to get a little bit of ‘Nightbirde’ in ourselves and remember how to live our lives. That’s what I believe you’ve taught me, that we got to remember how to live our lives.”
