‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’ Actor Reveals ‘Super Rare Autoimmune Condition’ Diagnosis

Brandon Hammond didn’t take a break from his budding Hollywood career by choice. The Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman star was forced due to a rare health condition.

At the time, he was 13, and fresh off rave reviews and a press junket for the classic film Soul Food. Within months, he says he was fighting for his life in a hospital with more questions than answers about what was wrong with him.

For the first time, he is speaking publicly about having to take a step back from the spotlight. In an exclusive with PEOPLE, he got candid about what he’s dealt with regarding his health.

“I was diagnosed with this super, super rare, autoimmune condition called Castleman disease,” Hammond explained. “What most people don’t know is that I was diagnosed not long after. So Soul Food comes out in ’97, September 26th. We’re at the NAACP Image Awards in ’98, [that’s] February of ’98 and we have an amazing night. We won for Outstanding Motion Picture, I won for Outstanding Youth Actor — I believe Irma won, Vanessa won. We just kind of swept that night. It was just an unbelievable night. Three or four months later, I am fighting for my life, basically.”

Per ClevelandClinic.org, Castleman’s disease is a group of disorders that involve a hyperactive immune system.” A person’s immune system gets active when there’s a threat in the body, but then calms once that threat is gone. A person living with Castleman’s immune system remains activated, which can then lead to “long-lasting inflammation that can damage organs.”

“I had all these chest pains, and my eye was flushed out red, just all types of physiological things were happening to me that we could not explain. And I was traveling all over — to Baltimore, to the National Institute of Health, to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Cedars-Sinai, UCLA, USC, and could not figure things out,” Hammond detailed.

“And then I had a biopsy because they were seeing that my lymph nodes were swollen. And that’s when I got this diagnosis for this thing called Castleman’s disease. I had never heard of it before, but apparently, it’s super rare in children and it’s super rare in Black people. So when you talk about rare, I’m the rarest exception to that rule,” he said.

He was advised to keep his health condition a secret. “A lot of people don’t know that because people have asked, ‘Hey, what happened? Why’d you stop acting?’ And I used to give these really kind of vague answers and responses because I wasn’t ready to talk about it,” he revealed. “I was kind of told not to talk about it. Of course, in hindsight, I regret that, right? But I was just following what I was told to do. My agents told me to keep it under wraps.”

Now, he’s happily back in the spotlight, working on meaningful projects. Hammond is currently working on a reunion documentary titled Sunday Dinner: The Soul Food Reunion, which will catch up with the Soul Food cast, three decades after the film’s release. The film is set to be released in 2027 to coincide with the film’s 30th anniversary.