Christina Applegate Talked About Finishing The Filming Of “Dead To Me” After Being Diagnosed With Multiple Sclerosis

On-brand with the fact that the last few years have been super shitty to many of the legendary and irreproachable entertainers we love, Christina Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis back in 2021. No stranger to health struggles as she had beat breast cancer back in 2008, she asked for privacy and expressed her intention to keep moving forward. As she learned of her diagnosis, she’d just started filming the third and final season of her dark comedy, Dead to Me. Although she took a hiatus for a couple of months to figure things out, Christina insisted on finishing the show despite needing to work around some of her physical changes and limitations.

According to The New York Times, Christina started feeling off while filming the first season of Dead to Me. However, she shrugged it off then. Looking back, she wishes she’d have given it more thought.

Filming a dance sequence during the first season of the Netflix wine-mom dramedy “Dead to Me,” she found herself off balance. Later, her tennis game began to falter. At the time, Applegate, an actress with an aversion to special pleading, didn’t make excuses. She had to work harder, she told herself. She had to try again.

“I wish I had paid attention,” she said during a recent video call from her home in Los Angeles. “But who was I to know?”

But finding out her diagnosis of MS at the beginning of filming season three was jarring since it’s an illness that can’t be cured–only managed–and gradually worsens. She had to take some time off to come to terms with it and devise a plan.

Over several years, the tingling and numbness in her extremities grew worse. And in the summer of 2021, on set for the third and final season of “Dead to Me,” she received a diagnosis. She had multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that disrupts communication between the brain and body. Production shut down for about five months as she began treatment.

“There was the sense of, ‘Well, let’s get her some medicine so she can get better,’” Applegate, 50, recalled. “And there is no better. But it was good for me. I needed to process my loss of my life, my loss of that part of me. So I needed that time.”

But then Christina, always the consummate professional, exclaimed, “I’m right on top of that, Rose!” and got back to set, determined to finish the story, even if it meant adjusting to her new normal. 

“I had an obligation to Liz and to Linda, to our story,” she said. “The powers that be were like, ‘Let’s just stop. We don’t need to finish it. Let’s put a few episodes together.’ I said, ‘No. We’re going to do it, but we’re going to do it on my terms.’”

Now she found that she couldn’t work as hard or as long or in heat without her body giving out. She struggled walking down the stairs of her trailer. A wheelchair took her to set. During some scenes, Mitch B. Cohn, a sound technician and longtime friend, would be on the floor, out of the camera’s range, holding up her legs. Some days she couldn’t come to work at all. Changes to the script were rarely necessary, though there were some adjustments in blocking. Jen had to be the one to open doors so that she could lean against them, and there are fewer establishing shots of her walking into rooms.

Her costar and friend, Linda Cardellini, went to bat for her as well.

But Cardellini was also her advocate. “She was my champion, my warrior, my voice,” she said. When Applegate hesitated to ask for a break or when she wasn’t heard, Cardellini stepped in. “It was like having a mama bear,” Applegate added.

Cardellini resisted taking too much credit for this. “I just wanted the best for the person that I love and care about and have the honor to work with,” she said.

Christina knows that she now looks and moves differently, but basically said that if assholes don’t like it, they don’t have to look at it.

“This is the first time anyone’s going to see me the way I am,” she said. “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.”

“If people hate it, if people love it, if all they can concentrate on is, ‘Ooh, look at the cripple,’ that’s not up to me,” she said. “I’m sure that people are going to be, like, ‘I can’t get past it.’”

“Fine, don’t get past it, then,” she continued. “But hopefully people can get past it and just enjoy the ride and say goodbye to these two girls.”

But just because she’s adopted a perseverant attitude doesn’t mean that she’s handling all of this with an unrealistic, sickening positivity that often pervades stories of celebrities overcoming hardships.

“Although it’s not like I came on the other side of it, like, ‘Woohoo, I’m totally fine,’” she added. “Acceptance? No. I’m never going to accept this. I’m pissed.”

Christina is a certified badass. She recently tweeted a picture of her collection of walking sticks:

I have a very important ceremony coming up. This will be my first time out since diagnosed with MS. Walking sticks are now part of my new normal. Thank you @neowalksticks for these beauties. Stay tuned to see which ones make the cut for a week of stuff. pic.twitter.com/O543p1G4vS

— christina applegate (@1capplegate) October 27, 2022

And here’s the trailer for season 3, which hits Netflix on November 17:

Kelly Bundy-lovers, Anchorman fans, and cynical wine moms alike are all sending Christina waves of healing thoughts. And even though Christina may not have it in her to fulfill her outstanding Miss Weenie Tot duties, she is set to lend her voice to the Married…With Children animated series revival that’s being shopped around to networks, so Dead to Me won’t be the last we’ll hear from her. 

Pic: YouTube