Former child star reveals 'super rare' disease forced him to quit acting: 'Told not to talk about...

Brandon Hammond appeared in big movies such as &34;Space Jam,&34; &34;Waiting to Exhale,&34; and &34;Soul Food.&34; Former child star reveals 'super rare' disea

Brandon Hammond appeared in big movies such as "Space Jam," "Waiting to Exhale," and "Soul Food."

Former child star reveals 'super rare' disease forced him to quit acting: 'Told not to talk about it'

Brandon Hammond appeared in big movies such as "Space Jam," "Waiting to Exhale," and "Soul Food."

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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September 26, 2025 7:27 p.m. ET

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Brandon Hammond as a child star and as an adult. Credit:

CBS via Getty; Paul Archuleta/Getty

Brandon Hammond, who audiences saw as a kid in big '90s movies such as *Space Jam*, *Waiting to Exhale*, *Menace II Society*, and *Mars Attacks!*, seemed to disappear from the screen by the end of the decade. And he was still a teenager.

Hammond explained in a new interview with PEOPLE that the reason is, when he was 13 — and was just experiencing the success of *Soul Food* — he received scary health news.

"I was diagnosed with this super, super rare, autoimmune condition called Castleman disease," he said.

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According to the Cleveland Clinic, Castleman disease is "a group of disorders that involve a hyperactive immune system."

For Hammond, "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." he recounted. "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."

Brandon Hammond photographed in 1997.

Bob Riha, Jr./Getty

He noted that, just before the diagnosis, he and the rest of the team behind the 1997 modern classic *Soul Food *had "an unbelievable night" at the NAACP Image Awards in 1998, where the movie took home four awards, including one for Hammond and another for Outstanding Motion Picture.

But he was "fighting for my life, basically," just a few months later. He made just a few on-camera appearances over the next few years, including on TV's *The West Wing* and *Early Edition*.

Now 41, he said people have asked him what happened, but he's usually given "vague" answers, because he didn't want to talk about it. He alleged that his agents didn't want him to get into it either.

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"I was kind of told not to talk about it," Hammond said. "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."

He's speaking out now as he's creating a reunion documentary called *Sunday Dinner: The Soul Food Reunion*, which was inspired by similar tributes to '90s favorites *The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air *and *Friends*.****

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Source: "AOL Celebrity"

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Source: VOGUE MAG

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