Christina Applegate had first MS symptoms in ‘Dead To Me’ pilot:
Christina Applegate is getting candid on her multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
Although the actress, 53, wasn’t officially diagnosed until 2021, she noticed mysterious symptoms two years earlier while shooting the pilot for the Netflix series “Dead to Me.”
Applegate spoke about her experience on the Tuesday episode of her podcast, “Messy,” which she co-hosts with actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who also has MS. The “Married… With Children” alum had her close friend and the creator of “Dead to Me,” Liz Feldman, on when she revealed that her symptoms appeared in 2019.
However, Applegate dismissed them and put off seeking medical help for a while.
The star said that she fell while running across a field during a scene for the dark comedy and now realizes it was an early sign of her autoimmune condition.
“I remember falling that day,” recalled Applegate. “Hi, first sign of MS!”
Feldman also remembered the incident.
“I remember you losing your balance a couple of times but it was very hard to figure out,” she said. “I remember one time it was like really late at night, we’d been shooting probably 14 or 15 hours, it seemed completely reasonable that anybody would be collapsing.”
But in 2021, while shooting the third and final season of “Dead to Me,” Applegate was diagnosed after experiencing back problems, tingling and other symptoms since MS affects the brain and nerves.
“There’s no handbook for this,” stated Feldman about the diagnosis. “I could just sense that A, she was scared and B, that something was wrong, something in her body was not working the way that she wanted it to. I told her so many times that it’s just a TV show; we’re making a TV show and it’s so silly, you know, at the end of the day!”
She added: “I knew Christina well enough to know that something major had to be going on because she’s an extreme professional.”
The producers ended up adapting Applegate’s scenes to make her more comfortable for the end of the show as her mobility declined.
“That would not happen anywhere else,” said the TV vet. “So my gratitude toward you guys being humans – because you should be humans and love other humans! – is, like, I can’t even tell you, that’s not the normal reaction!”
Since living with multiple sclerosis, Applegate has retired from acting but hasn’t ruled out voiceover work.
Last month, the actress got candid on how the condition has affected her daily life and Hollywood career.
“I lay in bed screaming – like, the sharp pains, the ache, that squeezing,” Applegate said.
She added, “Every single day of my life.”
“I can’t even pick up my phone sometimes because now it’s traveled into my hands, so I’ll, like, try to go get my phone or get my remote to turn on the TV or sometimes, I can’t even hold them. I can’t open bottles now,” Applegate admitted.
“I put my feet on the ground and they’re hurting, like, extraordinarily bad to the touch,” said Applegate, who previously shared she has to use a cane for mobility.
“I was like, ‘Yep. Gonna get back in my bed and pee in my diaper because I don’t feel like walking all the way to the damn bathroom.’
“I actually don’t lay here and pee in my bed diaper. That’s just a joke. But it’s like it’s so freaking painful and so hard and so awkward,” the “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” star noted.
In March, Applegate spoke about her outlook on living with the disease.
“I’m never going wake up and go, ‘This is awesome.’ I’m just going to tell you that – like, it’s not going to happen,” she told Robin Roberts for ABC News. “I wake up and I’m reminded of it every day. So, it’s never going to happen. But I might get to a place where I will function a little bit better.”
