Christina Applegate broke down into tears after she received a standing ovation at this year's Emmys.
On Monday, the 52-year-old appeared on stage to present the awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
After being introduced as a woman who "grew up on TV" by this year's host Anthony Anderson, who also described her as an "Emmy winner and a nominee again tonight," he welcomed Applegate to the stage.
A loud chorus of applause echoed around the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles as the Dead To Me star walked out on stage wearing a gorgeous red, velvet gown with a plunging V-neck. In one hand, she held her walking stick while the other was linked to Anderson's arm as he guided the actress to the podium.
As the applause continued, Applegate, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, was seemingly moved by the standing ovation and broke down in tears, burying her head in the host's shoulders for a few seconds before composing herself and facing the audience.
"Thank you so much. Oh my god, you're totally shaming me [and my] disability by standing up," a tearful Christina joked before presenting the award. "It's fine. OK. Body not by Ozempic. OK let's go."
She then went through a few of her most well-known roles, such as Kelly Bundy in Married... with Children, Samantha in Samantha Who?, and Jen Harding in Dead to Me, before mentioning her debut role.
"I'm gonna cry more than I've been crying," she said, noting she got her "breakout role" as a baby on Days of Our Lives.
"It's been an honor to play funny, flawed, [and] complex characters like the women nominated for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series," she added.
Watch her speech below:After announcing the winner of the category as Ayo Edebiri for her role in The Bear, Applegate stood and watched proudly as the star made her speech.
Applegate opened up about her MS diagnosis during an interview with the New York Times.
At the time, she was still filming the third and final season of Dead To Me, though it was extremely difficult to continue with the project after she started her treatment.
"There was the sense of, 'Well, let’s get her some medicine so she can get better,'" she said. "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."
However, she also emphasized that she had a "duty" to her work.
I had an obligation to Liz and to Linda, to our story," she said, despite show bosses apparently wanting to cease filming when she started receiving treatment.
"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 added. "But hopefully people can get past it and just enjoy the ride and say goodbye to these two girls."
Back in December 2022, she also told singer-turned-talk-show-host Kelly Clarkson that she tends to use her job as an actress to distract her from her real-life problems.
"I've probably been going through grief and trauma my whole life, and acting was the place that I got to go to not feel it, you know?", she said at the time, noting that she used acting to avoid dealing with past breakups, trauma, deaths, and breast cancer.
She continued: "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 explained. "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."
Applegate is a true inspiration to us all!
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