Zorica Brunclik on Illness: Everyone Knew Everything
The singer told RTV Pink that her family and husband Kemis hid her cancer from March to May, and he adds that it went on even longer.
Singer Zorica Brunclik said on the RTV Pink show Premijera vikend specijal, clips of which aired on October 11 and 12, 2026, that her family and her husband hid from her that she had cancer. Her husband, musician Miroljub Arandjelovic Kemis, sat beside her in the studio and partly added to her account.
What did she say about the diagnosis being kept from her?
Asked who was the bravest once it came out what was happening to her, Brunclik answered that everyone around her had kept quiet:
Everyone was acting, I didn’t know I had cancer. Everyone knew everything.
She described the moment she understood through a conversation with her doctor. After her second operation he told her, as she recalls, “The cancer is under control now, don’t worry,” and she noticed that the people close to her did not react the way people react to news like that. She concluded that they all knew and that it was hard for them to treat her like a healthy person. She described Kemis’s worry in one sentence: “Miroljub’s breathing woke me up, because he was watching to see whether I was breathing.”
She gave the timeframe herself: “They hid it from me from March to May.” Kemis immediately added that the truth had been kept from her for longer than she thinks: “Even earlier.”
Colon inflammation, a cancelled concert
The singer says she initially suspected something else. She thought it was an inflamed colon and did not think of surgery:
I thought it was an inflamed colon and that there was no question of an operation. I cancelled a concert only once in 50 years, and this was the second time.
By her account, she tried to strike a deal with the doctor to “fix her up” so she could sing the concert, and he replied: “Only over my dead body.”
The parts of the conversation that aired do not say what type of cancer it was, which hospital treated her or who her doctor was. She has spoken about her health before, including her stays in hospitals and plans to return to the stage after a final check-up.
A summer without the sea and a first ice cream
Recovery, she said, changed her daily routine. For a long time she could not eat spicy food, and she had her first ice cream the day before the show was taped. Sugar is allowed, but nothing cold.
I wasn’t allowed to drink anything cold and I drank only warm drinks all summer. We didn’t go to the seaside, the treatments were under way.
She added that they will not travel anywhere this winter either, but she hopes they can next summer. They would like to tour Serbia, and Kemis said that of all the world’s destinations only China is left for them: “We’ve been everywhere from Australia to Mexico, only China is left.”
Who called while she was ill?
Brunclik does not have a mobile phone, so colleagues called Kemis instead. On the show he said: “She doesn’t have a phone and everyone called me.” The singer admitted she was surprised by how many people got in touch, including some she does not socialize with privately: “They even surprised me, half the planet knows I was ill.”
She named several fellow singers. First Neda Ukraden, noting that it was unexpected:
I never had so much as a coffee with Neda Ukraden, and she kept asking about me a lot.
She also named Ana Bekuta, who, she says, did not let go of her, then Emina Grbic, her maid of honor Goca Saulic and Zlata Petrovic. Among those who offered support were also Halid Muslimovic and her friend Jasna Kocijasevic, with whom, the singer says, she has been close for 45 years.
Brunclik has since returned to her work and is a jury member in the new season of Pink’s Stars.
