Fans know Christina Applegate as an actress with a career spanning five decades, an Emmy winner, a mom, and a beloved Hollywood fixture. For the last almost three years, she's also been, as Applegate puts it herself in her X bio, a "Lady with a cool cane…"
In August 2021 at the age of 49, Applegate announced she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis -- commonly referred to as MS -- a "potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system)," according to the Mayo Clinic. "It’s been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition," she tweeted at the time. " t’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going. Unless some asshole blocks it."
It is with that signature blend of boldness, transparency and humor that Applegate, also a breast cancer survivor, has invited fans to understand more about what her life with MS has been like ever since.
"This is the first time anyone's going to see me the way I am," she said in a New York Times interview the following year ahead of the final season of Dead to Me's premiere. "I put on 40 pounds; I can’t walk without a cane. I want people to know that I am very aware of all of that."
While she was in production of that third season of the hit Netflix series, Applegate learned of her diagnosis, finally getting an explanation for the years of mysterious on-and-off symptoms she had suffered.
"My symptoms had started in the early part of 2021, and it was, like, literally just tingling on my toes," Applegate recalled in an interview with ABC's Robin Roberts. "And by the time we started shooting in the summer of that same year, I was being brought to set in a wheelchair. Like, I couldn't walk that far." The star credits fellow actress and Sweetest Thing co-star Selma Blair, who announced her own MS diagnosis in 2018, with ultimately getting tested.
"She goes, 'You need to be checked for MS,' and I said, 'No.' I said, 'Really? The odds? The two of us from the same movie? Come on, that's not gonna be -- that doesn't happen,'" Applegate told Roberts. "She knew. If not for her, it could have been way worse."
Following a five-month hiatus on Dead to Me production, during which she received treatment, Applegate -- who had first appeared on screen at three months old -- insisted on finishing the show. According to the Times, however, it was not easy for Applegate, who needed a wheelchair to go to set, struggled with the steps to her trailer, and whose character opened doors so she could lean on them.
"Shooting the show," she said during a remote appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, "was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life."
For her first public appearance since her diagnosis, Applegate stepped out with a walking stick to accept her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. "Oh, by the way, I have a disease," she quipped during her speech. "Did you not notice? I'm not wearing shoes! Anywho, you're supposed to laugh at that."
Despite the difficulties she's faced, Applegate forged ahead into the 2023 award season as she earned Emmy, Critics' Choice, and SAG Award nominations for her final performance as Jen Harding. She stepped out, walking stick in hand, for all three. The SAG Awards were particularly special as it was potentially her final time attending as an actor.
"It’s my last awards show as an actor probably, so it’s kind of a big deal," she told the Los Angeles Times. "Right now, I couldn’t imagine getting up at 5 a.m. and spending 12 to 14 hours on a set; I don’t have that in me at this moment."
Following the postponement of the 2023 Emmys to January 2024, Applegate received the warmest of welcomes when she stepped out onto the stage as the first presenter that night, accompanied by host Anthony Anderson, to a standing ovation.
"Thank you so much, oh my god. You're totally shaming me with disability by standing up, it's fine," she quipped, causing the audience to burst out into laughter. "Body not by Ozempic."
She later told Roberts in their sit-down, "I actually kind of blacked out... People said, 'Oh, you were so funny!' And I'm like, 'I don't even know what I said.' I don't know what I was doing. I got so freaked out that I didn't even know what was happening anymore -- and I felt really beloved and it was really a beautiful thing."
Added the actress, "I'm just gonna say this -- that audience stood up for everybody."
Despite offering up punchlines, Applegate has not minced words about her experience with MS. During her interview with Roberts, she said quite plainly, "I live kind of in hell."
Nearly three years after her diagnosis, Applegate also made it clear that she is still grieving her diagnosis and does not know when that will end. "I'm never gonna wake up and go, 'This is awesome.' I'm just gonna tell you that. It's just not gonna happen. I wake up and I'm reminded of it every day," she said. "...I might get to a place where I will function a little bit better."
However, right now, Applegate is coping with the disease by isolating. "That's kinda how I'm dealing with it is by not going anywhere," she said, "because I don't want to do it. It's hard."
As she put it, "They call it the invisible disease... It can be very lonely because it's hard to explain to people. I'm in excruciating pain, but I'm just used to it now."
RELATED CONTENT:
