Actresses Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler are opening up for the first time together about the health issue they both share: multiple sclerosis.
Applegate, 52, and Sigler, 42, sat side-by-side as they spoke with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts about the bond they’ve developed over their shared frustrations with the incurable disease, with which Applegate was diagnosed in 2021 and Sigler was diagnosed in 2001.
“She’s doing this [holding my hand] because I have the tremor,” Applegate said of Sigler, citing one of the many physical side effects of MS.
“Well, it’s because I love you, but that too,” Sigler said.
Sigler was 20 years old and starring in “The Sopranos” when she was diagnosed with MS, an autoimmune condition in which the body attacks myelin, the tissue that surrounds nerves, including those in the brain and spinal cord, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.
It wasn’t until 15 years later in 2016, just after she got married, that Sigler revealed her diagnosis publicly.
Six years later, in 2021, Applegate publicly revealed her MS diagnosis, which was discovered after she was unable to walk on her own while filming the final season of her hit Netflix show, “Dead to Me.”
“My symptoms had started in the early part of 2021, and it was, like, literally just tingling on my toes,” Applegate told Roberts during their interview at 1 Hotel West Hollywood. “And 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.”
Applegate credits her former co-star Selma Blair, who was diagnosed with MS in 2018, with urging her to get tested for the disease.
“She goes, ‘You need to be checked for MS,’ and I said, ‘No,’ I said, “Really? The odds? The two of us from the same movie. Come on, that’s not gonna be — that doesn’t happen,'” Applegate recalled, adding of Blair, “She knew. If not for her, it could have been way worse.”
Experiencing a debilitating disease in the prime of their lives
Looking back, Applegate said she believes she may have had MS for as long as seven years before she was officially diagnosed. During her first season of filming “Dead to Me,” the actress said her legs would sometimes 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 of her symptoms. “And then nothing would happen for, like, months, and I didn’t pay attention.”
In addition to being a chronic disease with no known cause and no known cure, MS can be hard to recognize, as in Applegate’s case.
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MRIs can identify lesions on the brain and spinal cord to help diagnose MS.
MS is also a disease that can be unpredictable, causing differing symptoms with variable timing and frequency from fatigue, numbness or tingling, weakness, dizziness and vertigo to rendering a person unable to write, speak or walk in the most severe cases, according to the NIH. Individually, MS symptoms can vary, ranging from mild to extreme pain during a flare-up of the disease.
Applegate, Sigler and Blair are all part of the demographic most impacted by the disease, young women.
The average age range in which most people’s symptoms start is between 20 and 40, and the disease is three times more common in women than men, according to the NIH and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, a nonprofit organization focused on raising MS awareness and increasing research.
“They call it the invisible disease. It can be very lonely because it’s hard to explain to people,” Applegate said. “I’m in excruciating pain, but I’m just used to it now.”
Applegate described living with MS as “kind of hell” and said she has found herself “isolating” at home as a way to cope with the difficulties of the disease.
“Right now, I’m isolating,” she said. “That’s kind of how I’m dealing with it, is by, like, not going anywhere, because I don’t want to do it. It’s hard.”
Sigler, a mom of two young sons, said she doesn’t think the “grieving process” of a life before MS ever goes away, but she said she does hold onto hope for advancements in treatments for MS, and possibly a cure. Currently, medications are available to help delay the progression of the disease and to decrease the frequency and intensity of symptoms.
“There’s this little bit of hope that maybe one day we won’t live with this,” Sigler said. “It’s hard to let that go.”
Finding support in shared stories
Sigler said that while she leans towards being optimistic about the disease, her friendship with Applegate has pushed her to be more vulnerable and honest.
“For so long, I have been celebrated for being the strong one and the positive one that it felt like I was not that if I would admit that some days were hard,” Sigler said. “But she really pushed me to be able to say that, because I thought I was letting people down if I would talk about how hard it was sometimes.”
Applegate, the mom of a 13-year-old daughter, credits Sigler with keeping her moving forward in the face of MS.
Applegate said part of her frustration with the disease stems from not being able to fully do the things she loves, like running and dancing and being a mom.
“She keeps me going because … I’m flipping the bird all day long at this thing and I’m angry. I’m really, really pissed,” Applegate said, adding of Sigler, ‘She’s like, “OK, I have you, and you are going to be OK. Like you’re going to be OK.’ And if not for her… I really honestly don’t know.”
Together, the two actresses are opening up in a new podcast, titled “MeSsy,” debuting March 19.
Sigler described the podcast as one in which the listener is “eavesdropping” on their intimate conversations.
“That’s all it is, and to me, those are my favorite podcasts, where you feel like you just got to, like, somehow listen in on a conversation with people,” she said. “There’s no format, no agenda, no questions that were coming, and it’s messy. It’s for sure a mess.”
Applegate said she hopes listeners will feel seen and heard with their own issues, whether it’s MS or something different. The former “Married… with Children” star, who has been in the public spotlight for decades, says she is opening up in a way she never has before.
“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.”
She continued, “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. And I don’t care anymore.”
Applegate got out of her comfort zone in January, when she walked onstage at the Emmys, with the assistance of a cane, to present the best supporting actress in a comedy award.
The actress said she felt “beloved” in the moment, and shocked.
“I actually kinda blacked out,” Applegate recalled. “People said, ‘Oh, you were so funny,’ and I’m like, I don’t even know what I said. I don’t know what I was doing. I got so freaked out that I didn’t even know what was happening anymore. And I felt really beloved, and it was really a beautiful thing.”
Sigler said she believes this difficult time for Applegate is actually a “beautiful chapter” for her friend.
“We recorded our first episode and we listened to it, the first thing I did was call her, and I was like, ‘I am so excited for people to get to know this Christina I just feel like I have a front row seat for,'” she said. “I know it’s hard, and I know it’s hard to see, but it’s a really beautiful chapter for her. I really believe that.”
