Selma Blair Encouraged Christina Applegate To Get Checked For MS

Christina Applegate is opening up about her multiple sclerosis diagnosis. In a Good Morning America interview alongside fellow MS survivor Jamie Lynn Sigler, the actor tearfully recalled how she discovered that she has MS in 2021, crediting one of her celebrity friends for making her get checked.

As she told host Robin Roberts, her condition was discovered after she was unable to walk on her own while filming the final season of her Netflix series, Dead to Me.

“My symptoms had started in the early part of 2021, and it was, like, literally just tingling on my toes,” she said. “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.”

Her friend and The Sweetest Thing co-star Selma Blair, who was diagnosed with MS in 2018, recognized the symptoms. “She goes, ‘You need to be checked for MS,’ and I said, 'No,’” Applegate recalled. “I said, ‘Really? The odds? The two of us from the same movie? Come on... that doesn’t happen.’ She knew. If not for her, it could have been way worse.”

Looking back, Applegate thinks she was likely experiencing MS symptoms for years before her diagnosis, saying there were times when her legs would give out from under her. “I really just kind of put it off as being tired, or I’m dehydrated, or it’s the weather,” she said. “And then nothing would happen for, like, months, and I didn’t pay attention.”

Since receiving her diagnosis, Applegate has retired from acting for the most part. In February 2023, she told Vanity Fair that she’s “probably not going to work on-camera again.”

With that being said, she hasn’t stopped working. She and Sigler are launching a new podcast, MeSsy, on March 19, which they say will feel like “eavesdropping” on intimate conversations about MS. Applegate hopes the podcast resonates with people going through similar experiences. She’s also appeared at award shows, earning a standing ovation when she presented at the Emmys in January.

“I’ve been playing a character called Christina for 40 years, who I wanted everybody to think I was because it’s easier,” she said. “But this is, it’s kind of my coming out party. Like, this is the person I’ve been this whole time. I was kind of putting on a little act for everybody for so long because I just thought that was easier — be light, be funny, don’t make people uncomfortable. I don’t care anymore.”