Christina Applegate says acting, humour distracts from ‘incredibly hard’ time after MS diagnosis

Christina Applegate is bracing the storm with a little bit of humour.

In a recent interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show, the Dead to Me actress, 51, got candid about using humour to make people feel more comfortable when they're around her following her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, via People Magazine.

“My humour shield keeps me okay, but of course, down on the insides, you feel the things," Applegate said. “I do it to kind of deflect and then also make people not be scared to be around me.”

“You know, when people see me now as a disabled person, I want them to feel comfortable,” she added. “That we can laugh about it.”

Exhibiting her comedic skills, the actress shared she wrote a holiday song called ‘Disabey Baby’ and gave the audience a teaser for it. “Hurry down the chimney tonight… I can't 'cause my wheelchair won't fit down it,” she sang.

Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in August 2021 while filming the third season of her Netflix show Dead to Me. During the interview, the actress revealed that she uses acting as an outlet to cope with her diagnosis.

“To be honest, being diagnosed with MS last year and what happened to my body, to my mind, to my spirit, to my everything, of course, I didn't want to be around anyone or talk about it, but I had to go to work,” she said, adding that things have been “incredibly hard” following her diagnosis.

She recalled to Clarkson the times she used her job as an actress to distract her from real-life problems which included breakups, trauma and even breast cancer, and shooting the show was no different.

“The beauty of Dead to Me is that it gave me almost this weird platform of dealing with it, where I didn't have to be on all the time, and I didn't have to make all the jokes, and I could fall apart in a scene,” Applegate explained. “And it was, like, me. It was my soul actually falling apart, unfortunately, in front of the world, but it was cathartic in a beautiful way.”