Christina Applegate reveals how she copes with MS: 'My humor shield keeps me ok'

Christina Applegate is revealing what helps her through her difficult battle with multiple sclerosis (MS).

During an interview on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” Friday, Applegate said she uses humor to “deflect” when she’s having a hard time.

“My humor shield keeps me OK, but of course, down on the insides, you feel the things, and I do it to kind of deflect and then also make people not be scared to be around me,” the actress said. “You know, when people see me now as a disabled person, I want them to feel comfortable. That we can laugh about it.”

Applegate gave an example, telling Clarkson she wrote a Christmas song about her medical condition called “Disabey Baby.”

“Disabey baby, hurry down the chimney tonight. I can’t. Cuz my wheelchair won’t fit down it,” she sang as the audience laughed.

Christina Applegate says she was determined to finish the final season of “Dead to Me” despite her MS diagnosis.
(Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Netflix)

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The “Dead To Me” star also admitted that even with the challenges she was facing, she was determined to wrap up the Netflix show.

“To be honest, being diagnosed with MS last year and what happened to my body, to my mind, to my spirit, to my everything, of course, I didn’t want to be around anyone or talk about it, but I had to go to work,” she said.

“I was not forced to go to work,” the 51-year-old noted, “but I made sure that we finished the show. We had to finish the show.”

“That was like a part of my family. Linda Cardellini, Liz Feldman, everyone there is my family, and there’s a story that we didn’t get to finish,” she said. “And I pushed as hard as I could for that. So it was really incredibly difficult.”

Christina Applegate called Linda Cardellini and the rest of the “Dead to Me” cast her “family.”
(Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images)

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Applegate admitted that she stayed out of the public eye once the filming of “Dead to Me” season three was done. She added that she worried new people would view her differently because of her condition once she returned to the spotlight.

“I went to sleep for a few months, and then all of a sudden, now I had to come out again and be this person,” she explained. “People had seen me as this other person for the last, almost 40 years, and I’m different now and it’s incredibly hard.”

“I don’t wanna be the fish in the fish tank, you know, but I’m gonna do my best to just get through it, I suppose.”

In August 2021, the “Anchorman” star revealed she had been diagnosed with MS a few months earlier. Production on the last season of “Dead to Me” was halted for about five months while she began treatment.

“I got diagnosed while we were working, and I had to call everybody and be like, “I have multiple sclerosis, guys. Like, what the f—!” she told Variety in November.

“And then it was about kind of learning — all of us learning — what I was going to be capable of doing. It had to be cold, because heat is our kryptonite. Can’t work those 18-hour days, you know? It was impossible.”

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The actress said that the cast and crew rallied around her and were “so loving.”

“If I called them in the morning and was like, ‘Guys, I can’t get down the stairs,’ they were like, ‘OK! We won’t do today. We’ll do other stuff.’ Netflix even let us take a break for a couple of months so that I could mourn and find treatment,” Applegate said.

On Nov. 14, Applegate was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The ceremony, which was originally set to take place in 2020, was her first public appearance since being diagnosed with MS.