The 53-year-old actress was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, but she remembers filming the first episode of Dead to Me—the show that aired from 2019 to 2022. In one scene, her character, Jen Harding, was running across a field.
On an episode of her MeSsy podcast with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, she told Dead to Me director Liz Feldman: "I remember falling that day. Hi, first sign of MS! So, not to bring everybody down, but there I was."
Liz remembered: "I remember you losing your balance when we were shooting the pilot a couple of times. It was very hard to figure out because, you know, I remember one time, it was really late at night. We'd been shooting probably 14 or 15 hours… It seemed completely reasonable that anybody would be collapsing."
Christina Applegate Opens Up About The First Time She Experienced Symptoms Of Multiple Sclerosis (MS)Christina confirmed: "It was MS."
She shared her diagnosis of the autoimmune disease, which affects the brain and spinal cord, in 2021, before the show finished. She has said that filming the final season helped her cope with the news.
She told Kelly Clarkson in December 2022: "The beauty of Dead to Me is that it gave me almost this weird platform of dealing with it, where I didn't have to be on all the time and I didn't have to make all the jokes and I could fall apart in a scene."
"And it was, like, me. It was my soul actually falling apart, unfortunately, in front of the world, but it was cathartic in a beautiful way."
She and fellow MS patient Jamie-Lynn Sigler started their MeSsy podcast to talk about their lives with the illness.
Christina said: "Just some thoughts. When we hold in feelings of despair, we give those feelings incredible power. Why Jamie and I have our podcast is to air those feelings. Raw, honest, and triggering. And by just sharing, we free ourselves. Never feel alone. There is always an ear somewhere. Love you."
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