Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler are shedding light on how their respective multiple sclerosis diagnoses brought them together.
After their mutual friend Lance Bass introduced them in 2021, the Dead to Me star, 52, and The Sopranos actress, 42, became quick pals and integral members of each other’s support systems.
‘If I didn’t have her, I wouldn’t be able to do this life thing,’ Applegate told People.
The duo, who are launching a podcast titled Messy next week, revealed they find comfort in being able to ‘talk about the hard stuff.’
Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler are shedding light on how their respective multiple sclerosis diagnoses brought them together; seen in January 2024
‘We’re in two very different places with MS, but we help each other,’ Sigler said. ‘Christina opened me up. I didn’t realize how desperately I needed to stop trying to be perfect.’
She continued: ‘One thing I haven’t done in the last 23 years is admit it was hard, because I didn’t want to let anyone down.’
Applegate agreed as she called Sigler ‘the only person who really knows’ her.
‘I can talk about anything with her. Constipation, diarrhea . . . Bravo TV,’ she mused.
Their conversations inspired their upcoming podcast, with Applegate stating that they ‘would talk on the phone for hours, laughing and crying’ before realizing they should ‘record’ their chats.
‘We started about a year ago recording every week. We’re sharing the deepest parts of ourselves — and I’m somebody that tried not to do that for a long time, so this has been healing,’ Sigler said.
Applegate added: ‘I spent my career pretending to be someone else for everybody in the public eye. I don’t have time to be inauthentic anymore. It’s exhausting.’
While they do talk about MS, the podcast is not about their disease, which impacts the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves.
After their mutual friend Lance Bass put the actresses in touch with one another in 2021, the Dead to Me actress, 52, and The Sopranos star, 42, became quick pals and integral members of each other’s support systems
‘If I didn’t have her, I wouldn’t be able to do this life thing,’ Applegate told People
‘That would be boring. I don’t want to talk about it that much,’ Applegate said. ‘It’s about being honest. It’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to be angry.’
Sigler went on to say: ‘MS brought us together, but it’s not everything about us. It’s the starting point to a conversation about how to push through something that’s hard.’
Ahead of her first photo shoot in four years, Applegate admitted that she was ‘sobbing’ thinking about having ‘to cancel.’
But, knowing Sigler would be there too, prompted her to push through.
‘“I wouldn’t have done it today without her,’ she revaeled.
‘I was throwing up last night, thinking about all of it. Being touched, makeup and hair, even talking about it, I get spasms. Weird positions, shoes, people, noise, climate I can’t control. It all goes through my mind, and I want to go back to bed and watch Naked and Afraid,’ she confessed.
Earlier this week, the friends sat down for an exclusive interview with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America about the toll of multiple sclerosis on their lives.
Christina explained how her symptoms started ‘in the early part of 2021’ when she was filming the final season of hit Netflix show Dead To Me and told Robin: ‘It was like literally just tingling in my toes and by the time we started shooting in the summer of that same year, I was being brought to set in a wheelchair, I couldn’t walk that far.’
As her eyes filled with tears, Christina’s voice broke as she continued: ‘So I had to tell everybody because I needed help, I needed someone to help me stand, and I needed someone to help me get there and they were wonderful, but I probably had it for many, many years.’
When Robin, 63, asked the mother-of-one how long she thinks she’d had MS for before being diagnosed, the Married… with Children star replied: ‘Probably six or seven years, I think. I noticed, especially the first season, we’d be shooting and I would buckle, like my leg would buckle.
‘I really just kind of put it off as being tired or “I’m dehydrated”, or “it’s the weather”, then nothing would happen for like months and I didn’t pay attention, but when it hit this hard, I had to pay attention.’
Christina admitted that she’s still in a grieving process as she adapts to the way her life is now.
‘It sucks, it’s not my favorite disease,’ she said before joking about her 2008 breast cancer diagnosis: ‘I have had a couple. It’s not my favorite one! They call it the invisible disease. It can be very lonely because it’s hard to explain to people… I’m in excruciating pain, but I’m just used to it now.’
The duo, who are launching a podcast titled Messy next week, revealed they find comfort in being able to ‘talk about the hard stuff’ (Applegate pictured in January 2023)
Referring to Jamie-Lynn, Christina then said: ‘She keeps me going because I’m the one who’s like… I’m flipping the bird all day long at this thing and I’m angry, I’m really, really pissed.
‘You know, I was a dancer, a runner and all these things that I love, and a mom. And she’s like, “okay I have you and you are going to be okay”, and if not for her, I really honestly don’t know.’
Jamie-Lynn was quick to praise Christina for helping her to deal with her own emotions and said: ‘For so long, I have been celebrated for being the strong one and the positive one that it felt like I was not that if I would admit that some days were hard.
‘But she has really pushed me to be able to say that because I thought I was letting people down if I would talk about how hard it was sometimes,’ she added, before sharing her thoughts on a cure.
‘There’s this little bit of hope that maybe one day we won’t live with this, it’s hard to let that go,’ she admitted as Christina joked: ‘Yeah I’m waiting, that’s why I’m sleeping. I want someone to just wake me up when it’s over. Just wake me up when we can be like, “you’re good, thank you!”‘