Jaclyn Smith Reveals Heartbreaking Reason She Missed Farrah Fawcett’s Funeral

When Farrah Fawcett died in 2009, Jaclyn Smith missed her funeral. Now, the Charlie’s Angels alum is revealing why.

In her new memoir, I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie, Smith recalled the sadness she felt watching her friend become “so sick and weak” due to her cancer diagnosis in 2006.

“Farrah was so depleted,” Smith wrote in the book, per Entertainment Weekly. “It made me sad to see her so diminished, but I was determined not to show it.”

Smith said she kept her heartbreak over Fawcett’s cancer battle to herself.

“She didn’t want to dwell on her illness, and I made it a point to be positive. I did my best to hide how I truly felt. It was hard watching my dear friend struggle for her life,” she wrote, per the outlet.

At the same time, Smith’s own mother’s health was declining. When the District alum learned that Fawcett had died at the age of 62 on June 25, 2009, she was in Houston “at my mother’s hospital bedside,” she wrote.

Smith said that her mother “insisted” that she go to Los Angeles to attend Fawcett’s funeral.

“She asked her doctor to assure me it was fine for me to go, and he did,” she recalled.

But upon landing in Los Angeles, Smith learned her mother had “taken a turn for the worse.”

“Immediately, I turned around and flew right back to Houston,” she explained.

By the time Smith made the flight back, her mother was placed on a respirator. She remained in the ICU for months before passing away in August at the age of 95.

Smith called her mother’s passing “the most traumatic experience of my life.”

According to the outlet, Smith also opened up about her friendship with Fawcett during the final years of her life.

“I always admired how she engaged with life as a free spirit. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t locked in by convention,” she wrote.