Actress Christina Applegate says doctors have told her she does not actually have multiple sclerosis, four years after she went public with the diagnosis that reshaped her life and career.
Applegate, 54, revealed the reversal Tuesday on her podcast “MeSsy,” co-hosted with fellow actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who also lives with MS. Applegate said a doctor delivered the news directly: “Congratulations, you don’t have MS.”
“This may come as great news, but to me, I’m back at square one,” Applegate said. “It’s hard to say that she came into my room, and she said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS.'”
Rather than relief, Applegate described confusion and distress. “I was, like, not happy at all,” she said. “Everybody else was so happy … You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of a sudden I’m better.”
“I haven’t gotten better, Jamie!” she continued. “If anything, I’ve gotten worse in some ways. So I’m back at square one that I don’t know what’s going on with me.”
According to Applegate, doctors are now trying to determine the actual cause of her symptoms and why the original MS diagnosis was made at all. She noted that misdiagnosis is not uncommon with the condition.
“There’s a pretty damn high number of misdiagnoses with MS,” she said. “So this is not a rare occurrence. It’s clear now that they’re finding something different. Something else is going on.”
Applegate said the news left her feeling as though she had “let everybody down,” in part because she and Sigler had become public faces associated with the disease.
“I became this — you and I, the poster children for MS,” she told Sigler. “And all that I did, everything I was doing. I had a reason. I had a f—ing reason as to why my day sucked every day. And now I don’t have a reason, and it’s very unnerving, and it’s really confusing for me.”
She was clear that nothing about her physical condition has changed with the new information. “I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor’s office,” she said. “I can’t walk from the car to the room. I’m still in this. Nothing magical happened when she said, ‘You don’t have MS.’ Nothing magical happened.”
Applegate first disclosed her MS diagnosis on social media in 2021, writing that it had been “a strange journey” but that she felt supported by others living with the condition. She has since spoken openly about the toll the illness has taken on her career, her mental health and her relationship with her 15-year-old daughter, Sadie, whom she shares with husband Martyn LeNoble.
“I’ve gone through a great depression because of it,” Applegate said on the podcast. “But you know, I lost everything. I lost my job. I lost — sorry. What do you say to someone who’s been living with this for six years? God, I’m so sorry, I get really emotional because it stopped my life.”
In an earlier episode of “MeSsy,” Applegate described how her declining health had affected her daughter. “She didn’t know this. It was like losing the mom she had to this f—ing thing,” she said. “Mommy can’t do all the things that she used to be able to do, and I see it in her eyes. I see it.”
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