TLDR: Diahann Carroll had already changed television once by the time Dynasty came calling. She joined the show almost on a lark, then spent decades fighting cancer without letting the public in on it.
Carol Diann Johnson was born July 17, 1935, in the Bronx, the daughter of a subway conductor, and started singing in her Harlem church choir at age six.
By 15 she was modeling for Ebony magazine, and she’d taken the stage name Diahann Carroll before she’d even graduated from being a teenager auditioning for singing gigs around New York.
She Won a Tony for a Role Written Specifically for Her
Carroll’s 1962 Broadway performance in No Strings, an interracial love story Richard Rodgers wrote for her personally, earned her a Tony Award, the first ever given to a Black performer in a leading actress category.
That kind of role, colorblind in premise but written by one of the biggest names in American musical theater, simply didn’t exist for Black actresses at the time. Rodgers made it exist for her.
A Show’s Own Creator Didn’t Think She Fit the Part, So She Changed His Mind
When NBC approached Carroll about starring in Julia in 1968, playing a widowed nurse raising her son alone, the show’s creator, Hal Kanter, worried she was too glamorous for the role.
Carroll didn’t argue the point. She altered her hairstyle, mastered the pilot script, and simply showed up more convincing than his doubts.
Julia made her the first Black woman to star in her own American television series in a role that wasn’t a domestic worker, a real, measurable break from the pattern television had followed up to that point.
It ran three seasons, earned her a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination, and made her a household name before Dynasty ever existed.
She Basically Talked Her Way Into Dynasty for Fun
Carroll found her way to the show almost by accident, while recovering from a Broadway run in Agnes of God. She’d been watching Dynasty and decided she wanted in. “Isn’t this the biggest hoot?” she reportedly said, before lobbying producer Aaron Spelling directly for a role.
Spelling gave her Dominique Deveraux, a glamorous, sharp-tongued diva who became, as one retrospective put it, more than a match for Joan Collins’s Alexis, doubling the show’s own “nasty” reputation. Carroll joined the cast in 1984 and stayed through the show’s original run.
She Kept a Serious Diagnosis Private for More Than Twenty Years
Carroll was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997, a diagnosis she’s said genuinely stunned her, since there was no family history and she’d always led a healthy lifestyle.
She underwent nine weeks of radiation and stayed in remission afterward, later becoming a public advocate for early detection, appearing in the 2010 breast cancer docudrama 1 a Minute.
The cancer eventually returned, though almost no one outside her closest circle knew it. Her longtime manager, Brian Panella, said plainly after her death that “she had been fighting it for quite some time, and did not want the world to know.”
Carroll died on October 4, 2019, at her Los Angeles home, with her daughter, journalist Suzanne Kay, by her side. She was 84.
You can read more about the rest of the Dynasty cast in our full guide to the show.
Diahann Carroll, Frequently Asked Questions
Why was Diahann Carroll’s role on Julia so significant?
It made her the first Black woman to star in her own American television series playing a role that wasn’t a domestic worker, a genuine milestone for network television in 1968.
How did Diahann Carroll get cast on Dynasty?
She approached producer Aaron Spelling directly for a role after becoming a fan of the show while recovering from a Broadway run, and he created the character of Dominique Deveraux for her.
How did Diahann Carroll die?
She died on October 4, 2019, at her Los Angeles home at age 84, following a cancer battle she’d largely kept private after an initial 1997 diagnosis.
