Christina Applegate Recalls 'First Sign of MS' While Filming Dead to Me Pilot


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Christina Applegate has reflected on the first sign she had multiple sclerosis (MS).

He Anchorman The actor, 53, was diagnosed with a chronic nervous system disorder in 2021, although he had experienced symptoms for years before this.

He has now revealed that he unknowingly experienced one of his first MS symptoms while filming the pilot for his Netflix dark comedy. dead to mewhich lasted three seasons on the streamer from 2019 to 2022.

“I remember falling that day. Hello, first sign of MS!” he told the show's creator, Liz Feldman, on Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler. Messy podcast, recalling a sequence in which her character Jen ran through a field.

Feldman said: “I remember you lost your balance a couple of times, but it was very difficult to realize. I remember one time it was very late at night, we had been filming for probably 14 or 15 hours, it seemed completely reasonable that someone would collapse.”

Speaking of how he gradually realized that Applegate had an illness, Feldman added: “There is no manual for this. She could feel that A, she was scared and B, that something was wrong, something in her body wasn't working the way she wanted it to. I told him so many times that it's just a TV show; We're making a TV show and at the end of the day, it's so dumb!

“I knew Christina well enough to know that something important had to be going on because she is an extreme professional.”

Jen (Christina Applegate) leans on Judy (Linda Cardellini) for support in season three of 'Dead to Me' (Saeed Adyani)

On-set adaptations were made for the final season of dead to meas Applegate's condition worsened. For example, sound technician and old friend Mitch B Cohn held the actor's legs while filming certain scenes. In others, he entered the rooms whose doors appeared on the screen first, so that he could lean on them to stand up.

“That wouldn't happen anywhere else,” the star said. “So my gratitude to you for being human, because you should be human and love other humans, I can't even tell you that's not the normal reaction!”

Applegate has said that she “probably won't work on camera again,” but that she would be open to voice work.

On the NHS website, MS is described as “a condition that affects the brain and spinal cord. “It currently cannot be cured, but treatment can often help control it.”

Symptoms may include extreme tiredness, vision problems, numbness in parts of the body, imbalance or dizziness, muscle cramps and spasms, problems urinating, memory problems, and sexual dysfunction.

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