While at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Christina Applegate had a special message for her multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
Sadie Grace LeNoble, 12, and the actress walked the red carpet together before Sunday night’s performance. The 51-year-old wore a cane to balance herself in her floor-length velvet tuxedo dress because the illness can affect one’s equilibrium. The letters “FU MS” were adhered to the cane with stickers.
Applegate, who was diagnosed with MS in 2021, stated earlier this month that the SAG Awards will likely be her final performance due to the effects of the disease.
It’s kind of a big deal because it’s probably my last awards show as an actor, she told The Los Angeles Times. Right now, I don’t have the energy to wake up at five in the morning and spend 12 to 14 hours working on a set.
As the third season of the Netflix comedy-drama Dead to Me was being recorded, the actress from the show received an MS diagnosis. She admitted that she put off seeing her performance for a while after it was made public.
She said, “I don’t like to see myself struggle.” In addition, I gained 40 pounds from drug usage and inactivity, which affected how I felt and looked.
When the program eventually began, the actress watched it alone, halting it occasionally when it grew too disturbing.
“I was eventually able to step back from my own ego and appreciate what a magnificent piece of television that was,” said Applegate. It was such a delight to see and experience every scene that I wasn’t in for the first time.
She made a virtual appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show in December when she acknowledged that she frequently uses acting to detach herself from her personal issues.
Acting allowed me to escape the suffering and pain I had likely experienced my entire life. At the time, Applegate claimed that acting helped her cope with past breakups, trauma, fatalities, and breast cancer.
She confessed to Clarkson that working every day offered her the ability to grieve for the first time, allowing her to incorporate the feelings associated with her MS diagnosis into her persona.
The allure of Dead to Me, according to Applegate, “is that it provided me almost this bizarre platform to deal with it, where I didn’t have to be on all the time, I didn’t have to make all the jokes, and I could come apart in a scene.” So, guess who it was? Me. Although my soul was sadly almost literally exploding in front of the world, it was lovely in a cathartic sense.
