Christina Applegate has reflected on the moment she first realized something wasn’t right — a moment that would later turn out to be the earliest sign of her multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
The Emmy-nominated actress recently opened up about the initial symptoms of her condition during an episode of her MeSsy podcast, which she co-hosts with fellow actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler. Speaking alongside Dead to Me executive producer Liz Feldman, Applegate revealed that the first sign of MS appeared while filming the show’s pilot episode in 2019.
“I remember falling that day”: Applegate’s first symptom on set
Applegate, now 53, recalled a scene filmed in a field during the early days of shooting.
“I remember falling that day,” she said. “Hi, first signs of MS. So, not to bring everybody down but there it was.”
Feldman responded that she had noticed Applegate losing her balance but hadn’t suspected anything serious at the time.
“I remember one time it was like really late at night, we’d been shooting probably 14 or 15 hours. It seemed completely reasonable that anybody would be collapsing,” Feldman said.
However, Applegate confirmed bluntly: “It was MS.”
“Something major had to be going on”
Feldman said she could sense something was wrong beyond exhaustion.
“There’s no handbook for this. I could just sense that A, she was scared and B, that something was wrong, something in her body was not working the way that she wanted it to,” she said.
“I knew Christina well enough to know that something major had to be going on because she’s an extreme professional.”
Applegate went public with her MS diagnosis in August 2021, after filming the final season of Dead to Me became increasingly difficult. Speaking to Good Morning America in March, she shared that her symptoms began as tingling in her toes early that year.
“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 said.
“My hand starts to go weird and then I’ll get a seizure-y feeling sometimes in my brain,” she added on Armchair Expert. “I have 30 lesions on my brain. My biggest one is behind my right eye, so my right eye hurts a lot.”
“This body that I had known was no longer mine”
In another conversation with Variety, Applegate described how her health rapidly deteriorated on set.
“It was very scary for me because this body that I had known was no longer mine,” she said. “We had to kind of work around that until, finally, I had answers.”
“I found that I had MS while we were shooting on a Monday,” she recalled. “I went home, and the doctor said, 'I need to do this meeting with you.' I could feel that this Zoom was not going to be good news. It sucked, I’m not going to lie.”
“They call it the invisible disease”
MS, or multiple sclerosis, is an unpredictable autoimmune condition that affects the brain and spinal cord. It can cause a wide range of symptoms, from fatigue and pain to severe mobility impairment, vision issues, and cognitive disruptions. There is currently no known cure.
“They call it the invisible disease. It can be very lonely because it's hard to explain to people,” Applegate told GMA. “I'm in excruciating pain, but I'm just used to it now.”
On the MeSsy podcast, she described the toll of recent flare-ups: “My legs have never been this bad so I don’t know what’s going on. Like, no energy. Legs are just done. I can’t get circulation. I can’t get them to stop hurting.”
She added, “Not being able to walk to the bathroom without feeling like I'm going to fall. Insane tingling that just has spurts of tingles that are weird coming from like my butt down.”
“There are things I want to do with the days I have left”
Despite the difficult reality of her diagnosis, Applegate has continued to share her journey openly and with determination. In a heartfelt tweet, she expressed a few dreams she’s still holding on to: “There are things I want to do with the days I have left in life,” she wrote. “I want to work with Shirley MacLaine. And do shots with Cher! And yes my days are so big. Just saying.”
She added, “I wish I could work with Shirley. That’s all. Woke up and that dream I have had for my whole life, washed over me. And I wept for a minute. And I’m sure I will again. Oh and Shirley, I don’t have your number anymore so.”
Applegate has also praised the Dead to Me production team for adapting filming to accommodate her illness.
“That would not happen anywhere else,” she said on the podcast. “So my gratitude toward you guys being humans — because you should be humans and love other humans! — is, like, I can’t even tell you, that’s not the normal reaction!”