Originally appeared on E! Online
Christina Applegate is grieving the death of her father Robert Applegate.
Two weeks after her father passed away at 90, the Married With Children alum shared that she is just beginning to allow herself to process and feel her emotions.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m crying right now,” Christina said to guest JoAnna Garcia Swisher on an April 29 pre-recorded episode of her and Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s MeSsy podcast. “I’m sorry. My dad just passed away a week ago.”
“This is the first time I’ve really cried,” she continued. “I think I wasn’t allowing myself to have that yet. Too busy with this, too busy with that. We knew he was going to die. Is that an excuse for not feeling—because you kind of know that someone’s going to go, and you’ve said your goodbyes?”
As for JoAnna, who has lost both her parents over the past few years, she is no stranger to the sorrowful grieving process. Indeed, she expressed that she often felt “not grown up enough to not have parents to lean on.”
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“It is insanely sad,” the Sopranos alum noted, sharing insight into her own experience grieving loved ones. “They are a tether. I felt very untethered. I don’t know the relationship that you had with your dad. But my relationship with my dad—he’s a soulmate, and my mom was my best friend.”
And while JoAnna said that she finds herself missing her parents’ advice, Christina—who shares 13-year-old daughter Sadie Grace LeNoble with husband Martyn LeNoble—admitted that many of the life lessons she’s learned, especially about parenting, didn’t come from her parents.
“I didn’t grow up with my dad,” the 53-year-old explained. “He and my mom separated when I was 5 months old, but he’s been in my life ever since. I have two beautiful siblings and an amazing stepmother, but he wasn’t part of the lessons part of life.”
Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association
Rather, the As Luck Would Have It actress relied on life experience and “the universe” to pave her own way—even amid her yearslong battle with multiple sclerosis (MS), an auto-immune disease that, according to the Mayo Clinic, affects communication between the brain and the rest of the body.
“For three years, since I was diagnosed, I’ve been in the hospital upwards of 30 times from throwing up and diarrhea and pain,” Christina said on her podcast last month. “That is unimaginable, OK? They’ve done every test known to man on me, put so much radiation into my body from CT scans to everything else.”
And back in November, the Dead to Me star opened up about just how severe and excruciating the pain she experiences can get.
“Everybody has different ways of it showing up,” Christina said to Jamie-Lynn, who also lives with MS, at the time. “I lay in bed screaming. Like, the sharp pains, the ache, the squeezing.”
For more about Christina’s journey with MS, keep reading.
Health Journey
Christina Applegate shared she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021.
“Hi friends. A few months ago I was diagnosed with MS,” she shared on her social media channels that August. “It’s been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition. It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going. Unless some a–hole blocks it.”
First Public Appearance
“Oh, by the way, I have a disease,” she joked during her November 2022 Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony, her first public appearance since her MS diagnosis. “Did you not notice? I’m not even wearing shoes.”
Early Symptoms
Christina believes her MS journey actually began “six or seven years” before her 2021 diagnosis.
“I noticed, especially the first season [of Dead to Me], we’d be shooting and my leg would buckle,” Christina explained during a March 2024 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.”
By the time she was shooting the Netflix series’ third and final season, the actress said she was “being brought to set in a wheelchair.”
“I couldn’t move that far,” she recalled, “so I had to tell everybody because I needed help.”
Making Moves
The Dead to Me star captioned this photo of her cane collection amid her battle with MS: “Walking sticks are now part of my new normal.”
Strong Statement
Just Jokes
Healing Through Humor
“I make these jokes because if I don’t, I’ll suffocate,” Christina shared on a March 2024 episode on Armchair Expert, explaining why she often pokes fun at her condition. “I’ll be done.”
MS On Her Mind
“I have 30 lesions on my brain,” she said on the same podcast. “My biggest one is behind my right eye, so my right eye hurts a lot.”
Legions are caused by the immune system attacking the myelin sheath around nerves, according to the Multiple Sclerosis Trust.
Getting Candid
Christina hasn’t held back when it comes to sharing her journey.
“It sucks,” the Anchorman actress told late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel of her daily struggles with MS. “I’m not going to lie. I think anyone who has MS isn’t going to be like, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to me!'”
In Her Bubble
When talking about her day-to-day life with the disease, Christina told Good Morning America in March 2024, “I live kind of in hell.”
“But I might get to a place where I function a little bit better,” she added. “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.”
The Sweetest Support
Christina credited her Sweetest Thing costar Selma Blair—who was diagnosed with MS in 2018—for urging her to get tested for the disease.
“She said, ‘You need to get checked for MS,'” Christina recalled during her GMA interview. “If not for her, it could’ve been way worse.”
Friendship Never Dies
Christina confirmed that Dead to Me will likely be her last onscreen credit, telling Vanity Fair in May 2023, “I can’t even imagine going to set right now.”
“I’m probably not going to work on-camera again, but I’m so glad that I went out with someone who is by far the greatest actress I’ve ever worked with in my entire life,” she said of costar Linda Cardellini, “if not the greatest human I’ve ever known.
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