Christina Applegate pushed through filming Dead to Me

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Lifelong actor Christina Applegate received her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in the middle of shooting the third season of Netflix’s Dead To Me. In response to her condition, production for the final season shut down for five months, giving the actor time to begin treatment for the autoimmune disease.

“There was the sense of, ‘Well, let’s get her some medicine so she can get better,’” Applegate says in a new interview with The New York Times. “And there is no better. But it was good for me. I needed to process my loss of my life, my loss of that part of me. So I needed that time.”

“Although it’s not like I came on the other side of it, like, ‘Woohoo, I’m totally fine,’” she adds. “Acceptance? No. I’m never going to accept this. I’m pissed.”

Applegate eventually returned to the set, embarking on what she describes as the hardest thing she’s ever done.

“I had an obligation to Liz and to Linda, to our story,” she says. “The powers that be were like, ‘Let’s just stop. We don’t need to finish it. Let’s put a few episodes together.’ I said, ‘No. We’re going to do it, but we’re going to do it on my terms.’”

Some changes to scenes were made during filming to accommodate Applegate’s needs. Viewers will see her character Jen opening doors in scenes to allow her to lean on them. In general, there are fewer establishing shots that feature Jen walking into a room. Off-screen, Applegate used a wheelchair on set, struggled to maneuver the stairs at her trailer, and, some days, was too ill to film at all.

Akin to their deep and fierce on-screen friendship in Dead To Me, Applegate and co-star Linda Cardellini offered support to one another, with Cardellini often stepping in as her friend’s advocate on set.

“She was my champion, my warrior, my voice,” Applegate says. “It was like having a mama bear.”

“I just wanted the best for the person that I love and care about and have the honor to work with,” Cardellini says of her role.

As Applegate enters the public eye for the first time since her diagnosis, she wants everyone to know that she’s well aware of the physical changes that have occurred over the last year and a half.

“This is the first time anyone’s going to see me the way I am,” she says. “I put on 40 pounds; I can’t walk without a cane. I want people to know that I am very aware of all of that.”

However, when it comes to the changes made on and off-screen to make Dead To Me’s sign-off, Applegate says, “Hopefully people can get past it and just enjoy the ride and say goodbye to these two girls.”

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Christina Applegate Reflects on Her Legacy, Turning Down Dumb Blonde Roles and Whether ‘Dead to Me’ Is Her ‘Last Job’

“It was the most fun I had ever had,” she says. “‘Dead to Me’ has that place in my heart now. But after ‘Samantha Who?,’ I never thought I would have another experience like that ever again. The cast and the crew were sublime. The stars aligned and we were gifted this moment in time. When it was cancelled, I cried in bed for, like, a month.”

But the show is never that far away from her, especially on the final season of “Dead to Me.”

Mitch Cohn from the Netflix show’s sound department held her legs steady off camera during doorway scenes when the MS made it tough to stand on her own. “I first worked with him on ‘Samantha Who?,’” she says. “Every job I come to, I try to get the crew I had on ‘Samantha Who?’ That’s what they mean to me.”

Where she will take them next is not known. Applegate is upfront about the limitations she faces with MS. It is why she is effusive in her gratitude for how accommodating the “Dead to Me” cast and crew were in helping her cross the finish line with the series.

“We don’t know what my future as an actress is going to be,” she says. “How can I handle it? How can I go onto a set and call the shots of what I need as far as my boundaries, physically? I don’t know who is going to be as loving and understanding as this group of people were.”

Until she can answer that question, she’s developing projects behind the scenes. She’s attached to a voice role in a project she calls “one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” and she’s starting a podcast with a friend who also has MS and shares her dry humor for their shared circumstance.

Months after its release, she has also taken time to watch the final season of “Dead to Me,” which proved to be a challenge in emotional endurance.

“I could see the excruciating pain I was in every day I was there and I didn’t want to relive it,” she says. “I had to take it in little tiny doses but I think it is a beautiful piece of work. I’m so grateful to Liz for seeing I had it in me.”

And she’s thankful for Cardellini, the Judy to her Jen, adding, “If this is my last job, thank God it was with her.”

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Christina Applegate Experienced “First Sign of MS” While Filming "Dead to Me" Pilot
by Glenn Garner
December 11, 2024


More than five years later, Christina Applegate is recalling how her struggle with multiple sclerosis (MS) began.

The 4x Golden Globe nominee unknowingly experienced one of her first symptoms of MS while filming the pilot for her Netflix dark comedy-drama "Dead to Me", which ran for three seasons on the streamer from 2019 to 2022.




“I remember falling that day. Hi, first sign of MS!” she said to the show’s creator Liz Feldman on Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s MeSsy podcast, recounting a scene that featured her character Jen running across a field.

Feldman noted, “I remember you losing your balance a couple of times but it was very hard to figure out. I remember one time it was like really late at night, we’d been shooting probably 14 or 15 hours, it seemed completely reasonable that anybody would be collapsing.”




“There’s no handbook for this,” said Feldman of Applegate’s condition. “I could just sense that A, she was scared and B, that something was wrong, something in her body was not working the way that she wanted it to. I told her so many times that it’s just a TV show; we’re making a TV show and it’s so silly, you know, at the end of the day!

I knew Christina well enough to know that something major had to be going on because she’s an extreme professional,” she added.




Applegate praised Feldman and the show’s crew for adapting the production for her comfort as her mobility declined in the final season.

“That would not happen anywhere else,” said the actress. “So my gratitude toward you guys being humans – because you should be humans and love other humans – I can’t even tell you, that’s not the normal reaction!”

https://deadline.com/2024/12/christi...ot-1236201213/