NEED TO KNOW
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Alex Dvorak hid her cancer journey while working as a high-fashion model in New York City
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Dvorak covered her cancer scars and lied about appointments while walking runways during Fashion Week and appearing in campaigns for brands like Free People
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The experience led Dvorak to write a short film, Bad Survivor, released in 2024
From the brightly lit runways of New York Fashion Week to behind the scenes at fittings, no one knew that up-and-coming model Alex Dvorak was a cancer survivor.
She had wanted it that way. Officially in remission from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at age 20 after being diagnosed at 19, Dvorak set out to start a new life in New York City.
“It was a secret, I was never going to mention it,” Dvorak remembers of signing her first modeling contract at 23. “When I had cancer, I would walk into a room and everyone’s faces would drop. I was a reminder of death. It was really heavy burden to carry when everyone pities you and sees you in a certain type of way. So my goal was to walk into a room and have people smile.”
“I wanted to be and feel normal for a second,” she adds. “And not just normal, I wanted to feel like a supermodel.”
Maintaining the facade required vigilance. The port scar on her chest, left behind from the device that once flowed chemotherapy treatments into her body, proved especially tricky to conceal.
“I would hide it with clothing, makeup, my own hair,” Dvorak recalls. “I have scars on my leg, so I would put foundation on them. It was a surprising amount of upkeep, to be honest.”
Plus, Dvorak had to attend regular scans and follow-up appointments. “I could be in a hospital gown in the morning getting scanned and be in a runway gown at night,” she says.
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Alex Dvorak on the runway for Sachin & Babi during New York Fashion Week in 2017.
Eventually, though, living a double life became too exhausting. The turning point came when Dvorak’s scar began to hurt out of the blue. Years after remission, there was no medical reason for the pain. “Now I’ve recognized that as the old me or the cancer me having something to say, as strange as that is,” she reflects. “She wants to speak out. She has an opinion.”
Dvorak joined a support group for cancer survivors and began channeling her emotions into writing. In 2019, she penned an essay for HuffPost detailing her experience as a model in cancer survivorship — which was how her agents found out about her illness.
Marisol Pesquera
Alex Dvorak.
https://people-app.onelink.me/HNIa/kz7l4cuf
In the essay, Dvorak recounts reading criticisms of her body in a campaign she did for Free People. Strangers online accused her of having an eating disorder when in reality, her body was still recovering from going through a major illness. She also recalls the mental gymnastics of agents asking her to lose weight while her cancer doctors were encouraging her to gain.
“People will project whatever they think onto you and have an opinion about it,” she says. “You really have to have a thick skin as a model, and so I just learned to handle it and take it all in stride and know my purpose why I was there, why I was showing up to work, and why this job and career meant a lot to me.”
Mireya Acierto/FilmMagic
Alex Dvorak backstage at Public School’s Women’s and Men’s Spring 2017 show in New York City in 2016.
Dvorak says her modeling agents “totally embraced” her after she went public with her cancer history, easing any fears she had that the revelation would somehow cost her her career. “Of course, none of that was true. Everyone was amazing. It was honestly no big deal, which was great. It was what I needed to hear and feel,” she recalls.
She did notice one change, however: she received significantly less comments about her body.
“I think I am far more accepted since being honest about it, which is cool,” she says, before musing, “I don’t know which was true; either the comments stopped or truly lessened or I actually just felt far more empowered and was no longer listening to that.”
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Alex Dvorak on the runway for Public School Autumn/Winter 2016 show during New York Fashion Week.
Long before Dvorak came to feel at peace with her cancer journey, she dubbed herself a “bad survivor.”
“Early into survivorship, I was really rejecting even talking about my experience or reading about anyone else’s,” she says. “I wasn’t going to a fundraiser, I wasn’t wearing a cancer ribbon t-shirt. I felt like a mess, and I felt like a bad survivor. I was seeing other survivors that I felt like were so empowered and eloquent in speaking about what they had been through, and I wasn’t ready.”
Connecting with fellow survivors in her support group, along with her growing passion for writing, led Dvorak to creating her short film, Bad Survivor, which was released in 2024. The film explores the first 24 hours after sarcastic teenager Alex is told she is in cancer remission, drawing from Dvorak’s own experience. Rather than celebrate and slip easily back into her old life, the character struggles to part ways with her doctors and refuses to take off her hospital gown.
Alex Dvorak
‘Bad Survivor’ movie poster.
Dvorak wrote, co-directed, executive produced and stars in Bad Survivor. The project was co-director and co-produced by Tony-nominated producer Katie North, who also appears in the film. After a successful festival run (including Slamdance Film Festival), Bad Survivor is officially launching its FYC (For Your Consideration) campaign and entering the Oscars race for Best Live Action Short Film. Dvorak is also developing a Bad Survivor TV series inspired by her time as a model in Manhattan while hiding her cancer remission.
The model-turned-filmmaker says that the movie’s intention is to “flip the script on the typical inspirational or melodramatic cancer narrative that we’re used to seeing.”
“I wanted survivors who feel a whole mess of emotions in that moment and for however long they need to,” she explains. “I wanted that to give them permission to feel okay and like, ‘It’s okay if you’re a mess, and it’s okay if you’re not necessarily the life of the party at your celebration, your cancer-free party.'”
Dustin McWethy
Alex Dvorak at Slamdance Film Festival.
In order to ease her nerves about reliving her own traumatic experiences on set, Dvorak cast her real family to play her parents and sister. She also made the important decision to not shave her head for the role and instead wear a bald cap.
Dvorak explains that at the end of a shooting day, she wanted “to be able to take it off and feel healthy in case it did feel emotional being in it,” but the experience turned out to be hugely therapeutic.
“My main character is speaking to camera all of the sassy, naughty, terrible things she really shouldn’t be saying out loud. [When I was going through it], I couldn’t say any of those things out loud. I wasn’t ready to share my internal dark comedy and dialogue, and it felt really good to recreate it. I think she’s really cool. So it was nice to play her again.”
Watch Bad Survivor online or catch it during its limited theater run at New York City’s Quad Cinema from Aug. 8 through Aug. 14. Get tickets here.
Read the original article on People
