Christina Applegate Reveals Horrifying MS Symptom She Completely Missed While Filming Hit Netflix Series Years Before Shattering Diagnosis
Actress Christina Applegate believes she missed an early sign of MS after falling on set filming Dead to Me with co-star Linda Cardellini.
Dec. 12 2024, Published 6:28 p.m. ET
Christina Applegate missed an early symptom of multiple sclerosis (MS) while filming her Netflix series Dead to Me.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the Anchorman actress, 53, believes a fall on set, while shooting a running sequence, was a consequence of the illness she was later diagosed with.
Applegate also lost her balance while shooting the pilot of Dead to Me, according to series creator Liz Feldman.
Speaking of her fall, Applegate said: "Hi, first sign of MS! So, not to bring everybody down, but there it was."
Dead to Me creator Liz Feldman, 47, noted that she had observed Applegate, who starred on the series during its three-season run from 2019-2022, experiencing physical symptoms, but chalked it up to long hours on set.
She said: "I remember you losing your balance when we were shooting the pilot a couple of times.
"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."
Applegate and Cardellini play characters both suffering from grief who grow closer amid therapy in the hit series..
Applegate — who continued work on the third season of the show after she was diagnosed — said that "it was MS".
Feldman believed she was empathetic in watching Applegate, also known for Married... with Children and Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, soldier on in production amid her health crisis.
She explained: "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.
"There's no handbook for this.
"I can't compare it to any experience I've ever gone through with a person before."
Applegate's fall was put down to shooting "14 to 15 hours a day" rather than more sinister reason.
Feldman said she "just always tried to put (Applegate's) health first in my mind" as cameras rolled on the third season of the show, telling the actress at times that her well-being was priority over 'just a TV show.'
Feldman said she told Applegate: "At the end of the day, yeah, maybe it'll reach people and help people and entertain people, but this is your life."
Applegate said Feldman and the Netflix show's crew went out of their way to accommodate her amid her MS battle, stopping filming for a week to let her recuperate.
Applegate, here at her 2022 Hollywood Walk of Fame honoring, has received two Emmy nominations for her role in Dead to Me.
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"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 commented. "I can't even tell you … that's not the normal reaction."
The series also starred Linda Cardellini, James Marsden, Sam McCarthy, Luke Roessler, Max Jenkins, Diana Maria Riva and Brandon Scott.
Applegate and Cardellini played the respective roles of Jen Harding and Judy Hale on the dark comedy, as a pair of women in grief who grow closer amid therapy.
The show was nominated six times for Primetime Emmys, with Applegate receiving two nods for her work in the lead role.
Applegate told Kelly Clarkson in a December 2022 interview that the show provided her with 'this weird platform of dealing' with the life-changing diagnosis.
She said: 'The beauty of Dead to Me is that ... 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.
"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."
