Christina Applegate finished Dead To Me’s final season while battling multiple sclerosis

NEW YORK – When Christina Applegate looks back, she can recognise the signs.

Filming a dance sequence during the first season of the Netflix black comedy series Dead To Me (2019 to present), she found herself off balance. Later, her tennis game began to falter. At the time, she did not make excuses. She had to work harder, she told herself. She had to try again.

“I wish I had paid attention,” said the 50-year-old American actress during a recent video call from her home in Los Angeles. “But who was I to know?”

Over several years, the tingling and numbness in her extremities grew worse. And in the summer of 2021, on set for the third and final season of Dead To Me, she received a diagnosis. She had multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that disrupts communication between the brain and body. Production shut down for about five months as she began treatment.

“There was the sense of, ‘Well, let’s get her some medicine, so she can get better,’” she said. “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.”

“Although it’s not like I came on the other side of it, like, ‘Woohoo, I’m totally fine,’” she added. “Acceptance? No. I’m never going to accept this. I’m pissed.”

But she wanted to do this interview, because the last season of Dead To Me premieres on Nov 17.

“This is the first time anyone’s going to see me the way I am,” she said. “I put on 18kg, I can’t walk without a cane. I want people to know that I am very aware of all of that.”

There had been conversations about whether the shoot should resume after the pause, but Applegate insisted on it.

“I had an obligation to creator Liz Feldman and co-star Linda Cardellini, to our story,” she said. “The powers that be were like, ‘Let’s just stop. We don’t need to finish it. Let’s put a few episodes together.’ I said, ‘No. We’re going to do it, but we’re going to do it on my terms.’”

Defining those terms was difficult at first, because Applegate was still discovering her own limitations and because she prides herself on self-sufficiency, on never asking a crew member for something she could get, do or find herself.

Now she found that she could not work as hard or as long or in heat without her body giving out. She struggled walking down the stairs of her trailer. A wheelchair took her to the set. During some scenes, Mitch B. Cohn, a sound technician and long-time friend, would be on the floor, out of the camera’s range, holding up her legs. Some days, she could not come to work at all.

Changes to the script were rarely necessary, though there were some adjustments in blocking. Applegate’s tough-as-nails widowed realtor character Jen had to be the one to open doors, so that she could lean against them, and there are fewer establishing shots of her walking into rooms.

In a terrible coincidence, much of this final season, written long before Applegate received her diagnosis, concerns illness, which made some scenes particularly hard.

“When Linda and I did those scenes, it crushed us sometimes,” Applegate said.

But American actress Cardellini, 47, who plays the dreamy Judy, was also her advocate.

Applegate said: “She was my champion, my warrior, my voice.”

When she hesitated to ask for a break or when she was not heard, Cardellini stepped in. “It was like having a mama bear,” Applegate added.

Applegate said that finishing the series was the hardest thing she has done. But the shoot had moments of grace too. She could not fall apart on set, at least not until a scene required it. And the love and support of the crew cheered her on.

Besides, she wanted to make sure the story received the send-off it deserved, even though she does not think she will watch this season. She finds it too painful. She worries about what viewers will think of it, but only up to a point.

“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,” she said. “I’m sure that people are going to be, like, ‘I can’t get past it.’”

She continued: “Fine, don’t get past it, then. But hopefully, people can get past it and enjoy the ride and say goodbye to these two girls.” NYTIMES