The Dead to Me star, diagnosed with MS in 2021, stated that the SAG Awards would most likely be the presentation of her final award as an actor as she fights the effects of her sickness.
Christina Applegate had a special message for her multiple sclerosis diagnosis while attending the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The actress walked the red carpet with her 12-year-old daughter Sadie Grace LeNoble at the show.
The 51-year-old wore a floor-length velvet tuxedo gown and accessorized with a cane to compensate for the balance challenges that the disease can create. The initials “FU MS” were affixed to the cane.
Applegate, diagnosed with MS in 2021, said earlier this month that the SAG Awards would most likely be her last as she deals with the disease’s effects.
“It’s probably my final awards event as an actor, so it’s a huge deal,” she said. “Right now, I couldn’t picture getting up at 5 a.m. and working on a set for 12 to 14 hours; I don’t have it in me.”
During filming the third season of the Netflix dramedy Dead to Me, the actress was diagnosed with MS. She informed the magazine that she waited months for her performance to be released before watching it.
“I don’t like watching myself in pain,” she said. “I also gained 40 pounds due to inactivity and drugs, and I didn’t look or feel like myself.”
When the actress finally got around to watching the performance, she did so alone and had to take breaks whenever it became too unpleasant.
“I was able to detach myself from my ego at some point and see what a magnificent piece of television that was,” Applegate continued. “Anything I wasn’t in was so much joy to watch and experience for the first time.”
She appeared virtually on The Kelly Clarkson Show in December and claimed she utilizes her acting employment to divert herself from real-life troubles.
“I’ve probably been going through loss and trauma my entire life, and acting was where I could go away from it all, you know?” Applegate stated at the time that she acted to avoid coping with past breakups, trauma, deaths, and breast cancer.
She revealed to Clarkson that going to work every day provided her the freedom to cry for the first time, pouring the emotions around her MS diagnosis into her character.
“The beauty of Dead to Me is that it allowed me this strange platform to deal with it, where I didn’t have to be on all the time and make all the jokes, and I could fall apart in a moment,” Applegate revealed.
“And it was, you know, me. Unfortunately, it was my soul falling apart in front of the world, but it was cathartic in a beautiful manner.”
