Tragic Details About Giuliana Rancic

For those who are celebrity-minded — so, basically everyone here at Nicki Swift — there are probably a couple dozen entertainment journalists who stand above the rest, sometimes because of skill but often because of visibility. Many of these top celebrity news reporters have themselves become a part of the cultural landscape, and a handful of them have transcended their original roles to become actual celebrities themselves. 

Giuliana Rancic is one of those entertainment journalists who has become something larger — a star with nearly 2.5 million Instagram followers and an ambitious businesswoman. On top of that, she has been (or is) a reality star, a fashion commentator, a public speaker, a producer, and a breast cancer advocate.

Rancic owns or co-owns multiple businesses, including RPM Restaurants, the skincare line Fountain of Truth, the G by Giuliana fashion line, and Giuliana Prosecco. She also founded FAB-U-WISH, a make-a-wish foundation for breast cancer patients. While she has evolved beyond celebrity journalism, Rancic's bread and butter has always been her on-air reporting. She began her professional career in political journalism but quickly moved to entertainment, where she made a name for herself as a host on the E! Network. Rancic started at E! News in 2002 and remained there for decades, with a few breaks. She also provided red-carpet coverage for the network and appeared on "Fashion Police," which almost ruined her career (more on that later). Though Rancic has accomplished much, it has not been all roses with no thorns. Here are some tragic details about Giuliana Rancic.

One of the reasons that Giuliana Rancic wanted to model was because of the validation she felt would come with the job. She has said that she was told she was "ugly" for the vast majority of her life, and that she believed it herself when younger. "I was pretty hard on myself appearance-wise, too. I never thought I was pretty enough. I was kind of tall and lanky. I don't mind it now, but back in the day I hated it," she told Seventeen, adding that if she could go back in time, "I would tell myself that what I think is ugly at 17 is actually what's going to be pretty about me later."

Though many young people struggle with self-esteem during their preteen and teenage years, Rancic had a medical condition that led her to feel even more self-conscious than most. She was diagnosed with scoliosis at 13, which caused much pain and forced her to wear a body cast throughout high school — a huge source of insecurity. "The thing about scoliosis is it's a different kind of ugly for a young girl," Rancic told People. "It's one thing to hate your hair or to have bad skin, but those are things you can hopefully treat. [Scoliosis] is very hard to camouflage and it's all you think about all day, every minute of the day." The star wore baggy clothing and stood in certain positions to attempt to camouflage her "flaws," eventually opting for surgery at age 21.

Two years after their 2007 marriage, Giuliana and Bill Rancic capitalized on the public interest in their relationship when they started filming the reality series "Giuliana & Bill" for The Style Network. The series documented their personal and professional lives, including both the lighter moments of their marriage, as well as their struggles. 

Amongst other things, it chronicled their infertility struggle, the birth of their son, Giuliana's cancer journey, and the start of their first restaurant. The couple also navigated intermingling their lives — difficult in all circumstances, but especially in a long-distance marriage where one person is based in California and the other in Illinois. The series remained on the air until 2014, with the final two seasons moving to the E! Network (the Style Network ended in 2013).

By the time they ended the show — reportedly because they did not want their son to grow up on camera — both Giuliana and Bill were pros at putting it all out there. But at the beginning, navigating a new marriage in front of the cameras was tough. In her book, Giuliana detailed constantly fighting about the show and having to pretend for the cameras before the duo got their footing. "I think what happens is reality shows, for a couple, they accelerate your relationship," Giuliana told The Hollywood Reporter. "So if you are destined to have problems and fall apart, a reality show will only accelerate it. But at the same time, if you have a very strong relationship and a solid foundation, it accelerates that, too."

Though Giuliana Rancic's infertility left her blindsided, per her own words, there was a silver lining in that it was the IVF treatments she underwent that led to her discovery that she had breast cancer. When she went in for her third round of IVF, her doctor insisted she first have a mammogram — because pregnancy can accelerate cancer — and Rancic credits this early detection of her breast cancer with her success in beating the disease. "Now I truly believe God was looking out for me," Rancic told "Today" when she got her diagnosis in late 2011 (via ABC News). "What's amazing is that baby will have saved my life. If I had gotten pregnant later down the line, I could have been a lot sicker," she added.

While she was thankful to have caught the cancer early, Rancic has also said that the diagnosis left her reeling. In a November 2012 interview with Health.com, posted on CNN's website, she recalled being "shell-shocked" by the news the year prior. "I thought I was going to die. I didn't know that if you find breast cancer early enough, you have a 98 percent survival rate," she said. "I went to work right after finding out and did E! News. I recently watched that episode and I don't know how I pulled it off. Afterward, I ran into my dressing room and started hysterically crying. Bill was really the one who had to pick me up off the floor and say, 'Hey, we're making a plan here.'"

One of the most heartbreaking parts of Giuliana Rancic's story is the unexpected way that cancer impacted her plans to carry a baby. After trying to get pregnant for four years, Rancic had to put her efforts on hold to tackle cancer whilst in the middle of her third round of IVF. Unfortunately, even after surgery, the star was unable to have embryos implanted in her body due to her cancer medication. "Part of the treatment is five years of tamoxifen, which can cause birth defects. So we said, 'Dr. Schoolcraft, what now?' He said the next step should be surrogacy because we had the embryos," she explained to Health.com. Before Rancic even announced she was cancer-free, she had already welcomed a son via surrogate.

Rancic and her husband have one son, Edward Duke, born in August 2012 by way of their surrogate Delphine. Delphine was featured on "Giuliana & Bill," although her face and voice were obscured prior to Edward's birth to ensure her anonymity while pregnant. Though Rancic had an unimaginably tough handful of years, she has no regrets about sharing it all with viewers of her show. "Looking back, I'm so happy that I did do it," she said of the show to "Today." "As I would question God, 'Why are you doing this to me, why me?' I think God knew I was a loud-mouthed Italian girl who would get out and share my story, not tuck it under a rug." Rancic also went on to found her own breast cancer charity, called FAB-U-WISH.

Her 30s were, in general, very tough for Giuliana Rancic. Though she welcomed a son at age 38, she had by then dealt with years of confusion, frustration, disappointment, and turbulence. She likely thought her 40s would start out better, only to experience the bruhaha about her weight at the start of 2015 (she was about half a year into the new decade by then). This came fresh off the heels of yet another tragic heartbreak for Rancic, whose surrogate miscarried. Though this was not the first time she and her husband had experienced miscarriage via surrogate, it was the most painful as it marked an official end to a chaotic journey.

After welcoming their son, Rancic and her husband quickly decided they would like to try for another child using their remaining embryos. Their surrogate first experienced miscarriage in 2014, when she miscarried two recently implanted embryos. The couple remained hopeful and put all of their dreams into the next shot — their final embryo. Rancic has said that the final miscarriage was the most painful, as it marked the end of even the possibility of having another biological child. "That was our last embryo and things were going great in the beginning of the pregnancy. About six weeks in, we found out it wasn't moving forward. It's just such a disappointment and there's a real sadness there," she told ABC News. Though Rancic has always said she and her hubby were open to adoption, they have remained a family of three in the years since.

Rancic was the source of much ire after Zendaya's response to the comments she made about her on E!'s "Fashion Police," and she very quickly issued an apology. She tweeted to Zendaya directly and then crafted a more formal video apology, without making excuses. It was only later, on "Today," that Rancic explained that some of her comments had been edited out. 

In a report from The Wrap, which contains the full text of the joke, it is clear that there were meant to be comments about Zendaya being "too high fashion" for the "boho" look, and references to The Grateful Dead. The problematic line in question was meant to be just one line out of four, but with what aired, Rancic made it clear that she understood why people were offended.

While Zendaya accepted the journalist's apology right away, the public did not. She continued to get hit with a disproportionate amount of vitriol, including death threats aimed both at her and her family members. Forgetting that dozens of others were on set the day the joke was told, and the fact that Rancic alone shouldered the blame, the very idea that a joke, offensive or not, resulted in death threats is truly terrifying. She reported getting photos of guns with text like "I will kill your family" attached. Even still, Rancic accepted responsibility for her part in the misstep. "I hurt people and I feel terrible about that," she told People. "And I learned a really important lesson that if people are offended, it doesn't matter the intent."