Video: Valerie Harper talks about new TV role and how she was supposed to be gone by last Easter

It’s been almost a year since Valerie Harper appeared on the cover of People magazine with the grim news that she had inoperable brain cancer and as little as three months to live.

For so many of us who grew up watching her on The Mary Tyler Moore Show then Rhoda, it was just devastating. I remember my sister calling me and just being so upset about it – like it was happening to someone we knew.

Well, TV icons are kind of like that and this four-time Emmy winner has been beating the odds by not only surviving, but thriving.

She has responded well to cutting edge treatment and tells Entertainment Tonight in this clip that she’s doing well.

“There’s so much more I want to do,” she says. “I am not suffering. I am not in pain, so I’m really blessed. … I just had a great response to a certain drug. I was supposed to be dead by Easter [2013].”

She’s got a two-part guest role in an upcoming Hallmark series Signed, Sealed, Delivered which premieres in April. She also appeared last month in the TV movie The Town That Came A-Courtin’.

Below is the ET story on the sensational Valerie!