Christina Applegate revealed her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in August 2021 and has been candid about how the disease affects her life ever since.
“It’s been a strange journey,” she wrote via X at the time. “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.”
According to the National MS Society, the disease affects the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. Symptoms may include numbness, tingling, pain, fatigue, memory problems, mood changes, blindness and paralysis.
Applegate has shared frequent health updates since revealing her diagnosis. In January 2026, she detailed a recent flare-up and expressed her fears that MS may be “taking” her.
Scroll through to see everything Applegate has said about her battle with MS:
August 2021
Applegate revealed via X that she had been battling MS for “a few months”. The Emmy award winner said that the experience had been “a strange journey” and “a tough road.”
November 2021
The Hall Pass actress was honest about her ongoing struggles via X.
“Yup. I turned 50 today. And I have MS. It’s been a hard one. Sending so much love to all of you this day. Many are hurting today, and I am thinking of you. May we find that strength to lift our heads up. Mine currently is on my pillow. But I try,” she wrote at the time.
December 2021
Applegate shared her love of her rowing machine. “I’m knowing it will help me to get healthy again. With MS, most exercises can be scary due to numbness in feet and legs. So, sitting and knowing I’m still using my body is awesome,” she wrote.
January 2022
During an X Q&A, a fan asked the Tony award winner about her 2022 goals. “Cure for MS maybe?????” she replied. After another Twitter user asked about The Sweetest Thing, Applegate said making the film was “so fun” but added of her costar Blair: “sad that both of us have MS.”
November 2022
As a result of her MS diagnosis, production on Dead to Me season 3 was halted for five months. “There was the sense of, ‘Well, let’s get her some medicine so she can get better,’” Applegate told the NYT. “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.”
Despite her condition, Applegate said she “had an obligation to [the series creator] Liz [Feldman] and to Linda [Cardellini], to our story” to finish out the show. “The powers that be were like, ‘Let’s just stop. We don’t need to finish it. Let’s put a few episodes together,’” she recalled. “I said, ‘No. We’re going to do it, but we’re going to do it on my terms.’”
According to the outlet, Mitch B. Cohn, a sound technician and longtime friend of Applegate’s, had to sit out of frame and hold up her legs during some season 3 scenes.
Applegate added that her costar Cardellini helped advocate for her on set, stepping in when she was hesitant to ask for breaks herself. “She was my champion, my warrior, my voice. … It was like having a mama bear,” she said.
November 2022
Applegate explained why she wanted to do a NYT interview ahead of season 3 of the Netflix dark comedy. “This is the first time anyone’s going to see me the way I am,” she told the outlet. “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.”
The Jesse alum added that she’s made her peace with the fact that some people might be critical of her appearance on the show.
“If people hate it, if people love it, if all they can concentrate on is, ‘Ooh, look at the cripple,’ that’s not up to me. I’m sure that people are going to be, like, ‘I can’t get past it,” she said. “Fine, don’t get past it, then. But hopefully people can get past it and just enjoy the ride and say goodbye to these two girls.”
November 2022
The Friends alum told Variety that her role on Netflix’s Dead to Me might be “the last one” she’ll ever play. “With my disease, I don’t know how capable I am,” she shared.
Applegate, who said she found out she had MS while she was at work, went on to recall the symptoms she experienced before receiving her diagnosis.
“I didn’t know what was happening to me. That January, my toes got numb, and I ignored it. The balls of my foot got numb, and I ignored it. All of a sudden, I’d be, like, falling over,” she explained. “People were like, ‘Oh, it’s just neuropathy.’ At this point, they had to take me with a wheelchair to set because I couldn’t walk if the set was far. I was sleeping all the time, and I gained 40 pounds — a lot of things happened.”
While she doesn’t think she’ll watch the final season of Dead to Me — “It’s too hard for me” — the California native shared that finishing the show was the only option for her.
“I couldn’t have done it without this need to tell our story. They were gonna pull the plug, you know? Because it was like torture — and they felt like they were torturing me, too. But I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no: We have to finish this story. It’s too important to our hearts; too important to our souls,” she told Variety. “And we have to give this gift, not only to ourselves — there are people that love these characters, and we’ve got to let them have their closure too.’ So, if that meant me having to take a break in the middle of the day so I could go sleep — or me just leaving because I couldn’t do anymore — then that’s what we had to do.”
December 2022
During an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, the Big Hit actress opened up about receiving her MS diagnosis, saying it “sucked balls.” She continued: “I found out on a Monday after work that I had MS, a disease I’m gonna have for the rest of my life.”
Applegate also detailed her experience with “very small symptoms” before she found out she had the neurological disease.
“I didn’t know what was happening to me. I couldn’t walk. They had to use a wheelchair to get me to set. I was freaking out. Someone was like, ‘You need an MRI,’” she shared.
January 2023
Shortly after making her first awards show appearance since her diagnosis at the 2023 Critics’ Choice Awards, Applegate fired back at a troll who accused her of being a “scammer” and getting “bad” plastic surgery. “MS didn’t make you look that way,” the user wrote in a DM, which the actress shared via X.
Applegate added: “What is wrong with people. By the way, I laughed.”
March 2023
Applegate slammed Candace Owens after old footage of the TV personality criticizing Kim Kardashian’s Skims line for including a model in a wheelchair resurfaced. Owens called the ad, which promoted products for people with disabilities, “ridiculous.”
“Yes late tweet. But woke to see the most horrifying thing. This Candace person making comments about companies who see we need help. It’s f—king gross,” Applegate fired back via X at the time. “Candace Owens, do you know when you have seen pictures of me how f—king hard it was to get my clothes on? A team has to help me!!! So I’m excited for accessibility clothing for me and my community.”
May 2023
The Friends alum revealed there is “never a good day” while battling MS.
“You just have little sh—ty days. People are like, ‘Well, why don’t you take more showers?’ Well, because getting in the shower is frightening,” she told Vanity Fair. “You can fall, you can slip, your legs can buckle. Especially because I have a glass shower. It’s frightening to me to get in there.”
Applegate added that there are “certain things that people take for granted in their lives” that have become increasingly difficult since her diagnosis.
“Going down the stairs, carrying things — you can’t do that anymore. It f—king sucks,” she said. “I can still drive my car short distances. I can bring up food to my kid. Up, never down.”
May 2023
“I’m probably not going to work on-camera again,” Applegate confessed to Vanity Fair before expressing her joy in wrapping up her career alongside Cardellini. “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, if not the greatest human I’ve ever known.”
January 2024
While making a rare appearance at the 2023 Emmys, Applegate joked that the audience was “shaming my disability” by giving her a standing ovation. She attended the ceremony to present the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, which went to The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri.
March 2024
During an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, host Jimmy Kimmel quipped that he and Applegate share “a very sick sense of humor” after she joked about making a funny entrance on the show. “I was thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I came out and I did a somersault like Willy Wonka?’ And then I was like ‘ta-da,’ you’d be [like], ‘What a bitch. She is such a liar,” she hilariously shared. “I’m not. I literally am disabled.”
She agreed with Kimmel’s sense of humor comments, noting that laughter is how she “keeps [herself] OK.”
April 2024
“I’m gonna be honest with you, I need to buy stock in Cottonelle because I haven’t taken a shower in three weeks,” she revealed on her and Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s “MeSsy” podcast, noting that her MS was in “relapse.”
She continued, “I can’t stand in my shower. There’s no f***ing way. … I have such a small bench and my ass is so huge these days that I can’t sit on it, it’s like I slip right off of it. … So, I’ve been Cottonelle-ing my body.”
June 2024
“I don’t enjoy living,” Applegate said on an episode of her “MeSsy” podcast. “I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy things anymore. … If someone’s like, ‘Let’s get up and go for a walk.’ Or, ‘Let’s go get a coffee,’ I’m like, ‘I don’t enjoy that process.’”
She clarified her comments on another episode of the podcast after fans expressed concern for her well-being. “Oh my god, you guys, I’m so good. Isn’t that what everyone wants to hear?” she stated. “I’m good. Does that take a little bit of the pressure off of all of you? I’m good.”
Applegate explained that the podcast was a “safe place” for her to open up about the darker aspects of her MS diagnosis. “I think that it’s incredibly healing and important to be able to express the thoughts, whether that makes someone uncomfortable or not,” she told listeners.
November 2024
On the “MeSsy” podcast, Applegate revealed that she sometimes “lay[s] in bed screaming” from “sharp pains” caused by her MS. “I can’t open bottles now,” she said, noting that she experiences her symptoms “every single day.”
March 2025
Since her initial MS diagnosis, Applegate said she has “been in the hospital upwards of 30 times from throwing up and diarrhea and pain.” She explained on the “MeSsy podcast, “They’ve done every test known to man on me, put so much radiation into my body from CT scans to everything else.”
Applegate brought up the issue while reacting to a fan’s comment about experiencing vomiting and having diarrhea daily after receiving their own MS diagnosis. “Talk to your doctor about motility issues, OK,” she said in response to the comment. “Because one of the things with MS is that it slows down our organs, you know, not like completely, but there is a slowing of the function of your organs. … I have noticed that — and I’m going to be really honest — if I have to poop, I puke.”
April 2025
“I want to do these things and I can’t, and it feels like I’m getting worse,” Applegate shared during a joint interview with Sigler on Hoda Kotb’s “Making Space” podcast. “And that’s disheartening. But then there’s like this voice inside of me that is like, ‘You’ve got to believe in a miracle. You’ve got to believe in another side of this.”
She continued, “That’s just kind of where I’m at right now, which is not very inspiring to anyone. If someone listening to me goes, ‘Oh my God, I feel that way, and I feel like I’m not doing it right.’ There is no doing MS right.”
Sigler agreed with her comments, adding, “No, there’s not. And I just want to say that I think it’s incredibly healthy. I admire Christina for her ability to just really feel these feelings that are very raw and real.”
August 2025
Applegate opened up about how her MS battle has affected her daughter, Sadie, whom she shares with husband Martyn LeNoble.
“I see her look at me when I’m in bed and can’t quite move, or I wanna go say goodnight to her in her room, but I can’t quite get down the hallway for whatever reason that my legs aren’t working that day,” she said during an episode of the “MeSsy” podcast. “Right now, I can barely get to the bathroom, it’s just the worst, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s broken her.”
Applegate added, “She didn’t know this. It was like losing the mom she had to this f***ing thing. And the more she’s gotten older now, I think the more it’s hurting her.”
January 2026
During another podcast episode, Applegate got emotional while reading a letter from a fan named Steven, who suffers from myasthenia gravis (MG). The autoimmune disease causes weakness in certain voluntary muscles. Steven wrote that MG has “taken [his] soul piece by piece, day by day, hour by hour,” which reminded Applegate of a recent MS flare-up.
“I’m reading it and I’m trying not to start being a crybaby again with every single thing that I’m reading, because I’m getting very emotional because I’m really touched by the fact that we’re all sitting in that space,” she said. “Like yesterday, I was walking, kind of OK. … Today, I was falling over, stumbling. I just feel like, is it taking me? Is it taking me day by day, piece by piece? I can’t even read s*** like this without getting super highly triggered.”
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