Christina Applegate doesn’t let her humor be taken away. The ‘Awfully Nice Family’ actress was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2021. In her everyday life, the 51-year-old is now dependent on a wheelchair or a walking stick. However, she tries to come to terms with her incurable illness in a humorous way. “My shield of humor protects me, but of course, inside you can feel these things. I do this to distract myself and also to take the fear out of people around me,” Applegate said on The Kelly Clarkson Show. .

Other people would now see her as a “disabled person”. However, Applegate wants the people around her to still feel comfortable. She wants people to be able to laugh about her situation together. “People have seen me as this other person for almost forty years. Now I’m very different and it’s incredibly difficult,” admitted the American.

“To be honest, being diagnosed with MS last year and what’s been happening to my body, my soul, my spirit, everything since then – obviously I didn’t want to go out there and talk about it,” said Applegate, who has since of her diagnosis in August 2021 for the first time in November 2022 in public. In the meantime, despite her serious illness, she was filming the final season of the Netflix series “Dead to Me”. She wasn’t “forced” to work, it was a matter close to Applegate’s heart to finish this project.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that affects the brain and spinal cord. In the course of the disease, visual disturbances, motor disorders, signs of paralysis, but also depression, exhaustion, pain and dizziness often occur. Although MS is still considered incurable, symptoms can be contained and treated.