Former “Dancing with the Stars” co-host Samantha Harris has experienced her share of frightening moments throughout her life. From multiple battles with breast cancer to a terrifying on-set mishap, she’s learned to roll with the unexpected. One of those close calls even ended with Tom Cruise coming to her rescue.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, the former “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent, 52, looked back on one of the most memorable celebrity interviews of her career — an adrenaline-filled promotional shoot in Seville, Spain, where Cruise quite literally saved her from an on-set injury.
“I’ve told my kids from the moment they were born… do not ride on a motorcycle,” Harris said before detailing the event.
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“It was a closed course with like 20 different cameras set up and fans for the movie promotion standing around,” Harris — who was working for “ET” at the time — continued. “We weren’t even supposed to ride on the motorcycle. We were supposed to talk to him, do an interview and get into a chase car with a stunt driver and then chase him on his motorcycle. But I was like, ‘Tom… can I just sit on the Ducati?'”
Harris said Cruise — who was promoting the 2010 movie “Knight and Day” at the time — happily agreed and encouraged her to “come on over.”
“So we go over there, and he goes, ‘Well, why don’t you go ahead and hop on?’ Well, let me tell you, I’ve only ridden horses. I’ve never ridden motorcycles. Now, if you know the difference with a horse, you put your left foot in the stirrup on the left side, and you swing your leg around, and you get on, so that’s what I’m thinking I do.”
“And I go to get on, and this Ducati, slow motion, as thousands of fans are watching, as cameras are rolling, this 500-pound Ducati starts to tip with me on it over, about to crush Tom Cruise.”
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Before disaster struck, Cruise reacted.
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“And I am freaking out, but literally, like in a movie scene, Tom gets under that Ducati, catches it with both arms, pushes it, rights it back up,” Harris said. “And I’m thinking I’m done. I got to go get in the chase vehicle.”
Instead, Cruise encouraged her to give it another shot.
“And he says, ‘Can we try that again? This time keep your foot planted… on the ground as you get on.'”
The second attempt went much more smoothly, Harris said.
“We got on the Ducati, he says, ‘Hold on.’ I wrap my arms around him and audibly — but I think I’m saying it in my head — go, ‘Oh my God, your abs.’ It was caught on TV. It aired later that day. My husband saw it at home while he’s dealing with… our firstborn. And I’m pregnant with my second. I don’t even realize I’m pregnant.”
Cruise then sped off with Harris on the back of the motorcycle.
“Tom takes off through the streets of Seville, Spain. It was the most fun, awesome TV experience of all my different thousands of celebrity interviews,” she said.
While Harris has interviewed countless Hollywood A-listers throughout her career, she said her perspective on life and work shifted dramatically after receiving a life-changing diagnosis.
The television host was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer in March 2014 at age 40. Looking back, Harris told Fox News Digital the experience ultimately led her to discover a new purpose.
“I absolutely found a new purpose,” she said. “I mean, this is for the last 12 years now, since my initial diagnosis, I have really shifted. Yes, I love doing my work on television, but now the work I’m doing on television is much more blending the world of wellness and how we can have agency over our health future.”
Earlier this month, Harris served as host of the Tower Cancer Research Foundation’s annual Tower of Hope Gala in Los Angeles. During her conversation with Fox News Digital, she reflected on her cancer journey, revealing that multiple doctors initially dismissed the lump she discovered despite her concerns.
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“If there’s a PSA for what I learned from my cancer diagnosis, (it) is that we have to be our own best health advocates,” said Harris, who is also a certified health coach. “We can’t just sit back and ignore signs when our body, as mine was screaming at me after I had three doctors after a clear mammogram over the course of four months tell me that the lump I found… was nothing. They said, ‘No, Samantha, it’s nothing. We touched it, we felt it. It was nothing.'”
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Despite the reassurances, Harris said her instincts told her something wasn’t right.
“And that inner voice was screaming at me to say, ‘Samantha, if this is truly nothing, how do we know unless we have more diagnostic testing?’ And I’ll be honest. All the diagnostic tests actually came back with… it’s also not cancer,” she said. “But, thankfully, I had an incredible specialist, a breast oncologist who took that tumor out not thinking it was a tumor, and we found out it was stage 2 invasive breast cancer.”
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After undergoing a mastectomy, doctors discovered the cancer had spread further than initially believed.
“We eventually, from my mastectomy, found that it had gone to a lymph node. It was much more further along than we even realized,” Harris said. “And it was in that moment, despite this wonderful television career I had hosting ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ hosting ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ all the fun red carpets, none of that was meaningful to me.”
She underwent a double mastectomy and was declared cancer-free later that year.
However, the cancer returned in August 2024.
“[After my first diagnosis], every expert… was telling me to do A through Z three times over,” she said. “And it took my diagnosis in 2024, when I had a recurrence again of this local regional recurrence that, thankfully, because of the healthy lifestyle changes I had made, that recurrence was very small. I caught it myself again, had doctors again tell me it was nothing, pushed again. And, thankfully, we found that it was, and we got it out, but it gave me another wake-up call.”
While Harris admitted she still battles an ongoing fear of recurrence, she’s grateful for where she is today.
“I am feeling more energetic, happier, healthier, more vibrant than I have ever been,” she said. “And I really think that the changes that I have made since my initial cancer diagnosis, and then the pivot to becoming 10% toxic since my recurrence, has really given me a new lease on life. And I’m excited for this next chapter.”
