Ryan Seacrest shares private struggles with dad's prostate cancer

Ryan Seacrest opened up on Monday about his father’s renewed battle with prostate cancer and the emotional toll it’s taken on his family.

In an emotional broadcast of On Air with Ryan Seacrest, Ryan shared that his father's cancer, once undetectable in 2021, returned and spread.

The American Idol host broke down as he recalled the moment he received a call during a live taping about his father being moved to the ICU.

Explaining that he’s “never really spoken about this,” Ryan said he somehow finished the episode even though “I didn't even remember what I was saying.”

“When this happens to somebody or someone really close to you that you love, this is a hard thing to see, because the treatments that are commonly recommended can be barbaric to the system. They can cause so much damage to your body in other ways," Ryan added.

Ryan flew to Atlanta immediately after the show and stayed by his father’s side through critical moments, including a life-or-death surgery discussion. His father declined the operation and spent weeks in intensive care, unable to eat, sit, or even drink water.

“When you see a parent suffering and when you see them going through this and you don't understand it yourself, you're just listening to all the different doctors and trying to make sense of what they're trying to suggest and do," he shared. "I didn't want to miss trying to understand who these people were that were taking care of my father,” he shared on the podcast. 

Ryan also noted that he wanted to help his mother, Connie, who is in remission from cancer. “I needed her to take a break,” he said. “When you're a kid, no one tells you how to handle this with your parents.”

His father was released this month and is home in Atlanta with full-time care, Ryan shared. He also revealed that he has flown back and forth from Los Angeles every weekend to visit his father, who struggled to get up out of his chair for nearly five months.