Christina Applegate began experiencing the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis while filming the pilot for Dead to Me, long before she was diagnosed with the disease in 2021.
During the Wednesday, Dec. 11 episode of MeSsy, the podcast she co-hosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Applegate, 53, recalled falling while filming a scene of her character running across a field.
“I remember falling that day,” Applegate said in the discussion with Dead to Me creator Liz Feldman. “Hi, first sign of MS! So, not to bring everybody down, but there it was.”
“I remember you losing your balance when we were shooting the pilot a couple of times,” Feldman, 47, told Applegate. “It was very hard to figure it 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.”
“It was MS,” Applegate said.
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Applegate announced her MS diagnosis in August 2021, saying she was diagnosed a few months prior. However, Applegate still finished filming the third and final season of Dead to Me, even as her mobility declined. The progressive disease “damages the protective cover around nerves called myelin in your central nervous system. It can cause muscle weakness, vision changes, numbness and memory issues,” according to the Cleveland Clinic.
“There’s no handbook for this,” Feldman said. “I can’t compare it to any experience I’ve ever gone through with a person before.”
“I could just sense A, that she was scared, and B, that something was wrong … that something in her body was not working the way that she wanted it to.”
Feldman recalled telling Applegate that it was “just a TV show” they were making. “At the end of the day, yeah, maybe it’ll reach people and help people and entertain people, but this is your life,” Feldman said. “I just always tried to put her health first in my mind.”
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Later, Applegate praised Feldman and the rest of the Dead to Me crew for their understanding during production, specifically recalling how filming was once shut down a week because of her.
“That would not happen anywhere else, so my gratitude towards you guys being humans – because you should be humans and love other humans – is astounding,” Applegate said. “I can’t even tell you… That’s not the normal reaction.”
Dead to Me starred Applegate and Linda Cardellini as two grieving women who bond during therapy and become intertwined, despite their very different personalities. Applegate earned Emmy nominations in 2020 and 2023 for her performance.
In December 2022, Applegate told Kelly Clarkson that filming the final season helped her cope with her MS diagnosis.
“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,” Applegate said. “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.”
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