Christina Applegate spotted this MS symptom 7 years before her diagnosis
Christina Applegate is sharing more heartbreaking details about her battle with multiple sclerosis.
During a Wednesday appearance on “Good Morning America,” Christina Applegate, 52, and her friend “Sopranos” alum Jamie-Lynn Sigler, 42, sat down with Robin Roberts.
“My symptoms had started in the early part of 2021, and it was, like, literally just tingling on my toes,” Applegate said.
“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,” she added, referring to her Netflix show “Dead To Me,” which ran for three seasons on Netflix, from 2019 to 2022.
Applegate revealed that she had been diagnosed with MS in 2021 while filming that series.
In a 2022 interview with Variety, Applegate opened up on being diagnosed with the disease while in the middle of filming.
“I didn’t know what was happening to me,” she said. “That January, my toes got numb, and I ignored it. The balls of my foot got numb, and I ignored it. All of a sudden, I’d be, like, falling over. People were like, ‘Oh, it’s just neuropathy.’ At this point, they had to take me with a wheelchair to set because I couldn’t walk if the set was far. I was sleeping all the time, and I gained 40 pounds — a lot of things happened.”
The “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” star said during Wednesday’s “GMA” interview that she thinks she may have had MS for as long as seven years before she was officially diagnosed.
Her legs would sometimes give out from under her, she said.
“I really just kind of put it off as being tired, or I’m dehydrated, or it’s the weather. And then nothing would happen for, like, months, and I didn’t pay attention.”
Applegate described living with MS as “kind of hell” and said she has found herself “isolating” at home as a way to cope with the difficulties of the disease. “They call it the invisible disease. It can be very lonely, because it’s hard to explain to people,” Applegate said.
“I’m in excruciating pain, but I’m just used to it now . . . Right now, I’m isolating. That’s kind of how I’m dealing with it, is by, like, not going anywhere, because I don’t want to do it. It’s hard.”
Amid her health battle, Applegate has taken a step back from acting, but the “Married . . . With Children” alum made a surprise appearance at the 2024 Emmy Awards in January.
The actress got emotional as she received a standing ovation from the crowd after joining host Anthony Anderson onstage.
As she walked up to the stage wearing a red gown and walking with a cane, Applegate joked that her body was “not by Ozempic.”
Applegate revealed on her “GMA” interview that she barely remembers her Emmys appearance.
“I kind of blacked out,” the former “Friends” guest star said.
“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,” she continued. “And I felt really beloved, and it was a beautiful thing.”
In February 2023, Applegate said that her then-recent Screen Actors Guild Awards appearance would most likely mark the final awards ceremony she attended.
She told the Los Angeles Times at the time: “It’s my last awards show as an actor probably, so it’s kind of a big deal.”
Applegate, who tied the knot with her second husband, Dutch musician Martyn LeNoble in 2013, and has a 12-year-old daughter, Sadie, told People in an interview published on Wednesday, “My daughter’s had to see the loss of her mom, in the way that I was a mom with her. Dancing with her every day. Picking her up from school every day. Working at her school, working in the library. Being present, out of the house, out of my bed. She doesn’t see those things anymore.”
She continued: “If she comes in my room and sees I’m laying on my side, she knows she can’t ask me to do anything. And that breaks me. Because I love doing stuff for my kid. I love making her food and bringing it to her, but I just can’t sometimes. But I try. I try.”
Sigler also has MS, and the two actresses told the outlet that their mutual friend, former *NSYNC member Lance Bass, put them in touch.
“If I didn’t have her, I wouldn’t be able to do this life thing,” Applegate said.
Their podcast, “MeSsy,” comes out March 19.
