Christina Applegate Says She Likely Had MS for 7 Years Before Diagnosis

Christina Applegate is reflecting on her health journey. 

The Dead to Me star revealed that she likely experienced multiple sclerosis symptoms for "six or seven years" before she actually got diagnosed with the condition in 2021. 

"I noticed, especially the first season [of Dead to Me], we'd be shooting and my leg would buckle," Christina explained during a March 13 interview on Good Morning America. "I really just put it off as being tired, or I'm dehydrated, or it's the weather. Then nothing would happen for months, and I didn't pay attention."

Before filming the final season of the Netflix series, however, the Anchorman alum experienced a strange tingling feeling in her toes, as well as other symptoms, that made her realize she "had to pay attention." 

"By the time we started shooting in the summer of that same year, I was being brought to set in a wheelchair," Christina continued. "I couldn't move that far, so I had to tell everybody because I needed help."

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Still, she wasn't the one who suspected she might have multiple sclerosis. Instead, the 52-year-old credited her Sweetest Thing costar Selma Blair—who was diagnosed with the same condition in 2018—with urging her to get tested for the disease.

"She said, 'You need to get checked for M.S.,'" Christina remembered. "I said, 'Really? The odds? That doesn't happen to two people from the same movie.'"

She added, "If not for her, it could've been way worse."

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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And while Christina—who shares daughter Sadie Grace, 12, with husband Martyn LeNoble—has a lot of support from friends, family and fans on her health journey, she wasn't afraid to admit that sometimes she's still "really, really pissed" she has to live with M.S.

"I'm never going to wake up and go, ‘This is awesome,'" she admitted. "I'm just going to tell you that. Like, it's not going to happen."

Christina added, "But I might get to a place where I function a little bit better. Right now, I'm isolating, and that's kind of how I'm dealing with it—by not going anywhere because I don't want to do it. It's hard."