With Dead to Me in her rearview, it looks like Christina Applegate may never act again – at least, not in the way she has in the past. While talking to The Hollywood Reporter this week, Christina said she may never appear on screen again, thanks to the challenges that her multiple sclerosis diagnosis has brought her.
Christina has been nominated at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The SAG Awards are scheduled to take place February 26, and Christina has been honored for her work on the Netflix series. She received a nomination for Female Actor in a Comedy Series, and now, she's opening up about why it may be the last award she is ever able to receive.
She feels her on-screen career might be over.
"It’s my last awards show as an actor probably, so it’s kind of a big deal," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "Right now, I couldn’t imagine getting up at 5 a.m. and spending 12 to 14 hours on a set; I don’t have that in me at this moment."
The hours actors spend on set to create a show or movie are already grueling enough; adding in the symptoms like the ones that can come with MS would make it an even more difficult schedule.
It wasn't fun for her to watch the final season of 'Dead to Me.'
The season was filmed out of order with a break in between after Christina received her MS diagnosis to help accommodate her as much as possible, and she admitted it took her a while to watch those episodes, knowing what she'd been going through at the time.
"I don’t like seeing myself struggling," she said. "Also, I gained 40 pounds because of inactivity and medications, and I didn’t look like myself, and I didn’t feel like myself. At some point I was able to distance myself from my own ego, and realize what a beautiful piece of television it was. All the scenes I wasn’t in were so much fun to see and experience for the very first time."
She's considering doing more work behind the scenes.
She believes she'll be staying in the entertainment industry for as long as she can, producing and "doing a s— ton of voice-overs to make some cash to make sure that my daughter’s fed and we’re homed."
We haven't heard the last of Christina, even if she no longer plans to appear on camera.
Making these decisions can't be easy.
But good for Christina for being so open about the unexpected path she's walking down, even if it's not what she imagined for her future. There's no doubt that she's making people who are coping with a similar diagnosis feel less alone.
