Christina Applegate will make her first red carpet appearance since her devastating MS diagnosis when she attends Sunday’s Critics Choice Awards.
The actress, nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Jen Harding in Dead to Me, took to Twitter on Thursday to reveal her nervousness ahead of the glittering event.
She wrote: “So this Sunday will be the first awards show I’ve attended since 2019. And the first since MS. NERVOUS! But grateful for the @CriticsChoice for including me.’
Brave: Christina Applegate will make her first red carpet appearance since her devastating MS diagnosis when she attends the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday (pictured in November).
She plays Harding in Dead To Me, a real estate agent who befriends a woman named Judy who she meets at a grief counseling meeting (Linda Cardellini) after her husband is killed in a hit-and-run accident.
James Marsden also has two roles in the dark comedy, playing Judy’s abusive ex-fiancé in the first season and his brother, who forms a relationship with Jen, in the last two seasons. He is nominated in the Best Actor in a Comedy Series category.
But Jen’s attempts to move away from her husband’s death are threatened when she learns secrets about Cardellini’s identity and connection to his death.
Back in 2021, Applegate announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis “a few months ago.”
Series: The actress, nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Jen Harding in ‘Dead to Me,’ took to Twitter on Thursday to reveal her nervousness ahead of the glittering event
“It was a strange journey. But I’ve had enough support from people that I know who also has this disease. It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, there is a long way to go. Unless some asshole blocks it,” she wrote at the time.
“As one of my friends with MS said, ‘We’re waking up and taking the necessary action,'” she continued. ‘And that’s what I do. So now I’m asking for privacy. As I go through this thing Thank you xo.’
According to the National MS Society, the condition is an “unpredictable disorder of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and body.”
Balance, sensation, arm and leg function, and even vision can be negatively affected by MS.
However, treatments exist to slow the progression of the condition.
Affected individuals may live five to 10 years less than unaffected individuals, but life expectancy does not differ drastically.
Speaking of which, back in August 2021, Applegate announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis “a few months ago.”
The condition is thought to affect women two to three times more often than men.
Though she didn’t reveal the identity of her friend with MS in her original post, she and activist and MS advocate Selma Blair are known to be friends, and Blair opened up about their post-diagnosis relationship in November last year.
“I’ve known Christina for so many years, we’re very close and I’m just a fan of hers,” she told Entertainment Tonight after the Dancing With The Stars finale.
“She’s an iconic Californian actress of my generation, and she is,” the Hellboy actress continued. “There wasn’t one thing she did that I didn’t say, ‘Did it,’ and she’s just nailing who she is with this MS.”
She added that Christina supported her after her diagnosis in October 2018.
Old friends: Although she didn’t reveal the identity of her friend in her original post, she and activist and MS advocate Selma Blair are known to be friends, and Blair opened up about their relationship after being diagnosed in November last year; Selma and Christina were spotted in NYC in 2002
Last month, during an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Christina described filming the third and final season of Dead To Me as the “hardest” thing she’s ever done following her diagnosis.
“Filming the show was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life because I was diagnosed while filming. I didn’t know what was happening to me,” she explained.
She had enough difficulty walking to adjust to a wheelchair, and after being asked to get evaluated and receive her diagnosis, she began thinking back to small signs and symptoms that might have been present over the past four years.
“It sucked,” she said of her diagnosis.
Christina has spoken openly about her health issues in the past so others can benefit from the exposure.
Health issues: In 2008, Christina underwent a double mastectomy to reduce the chance of spreading cancer, and in 2018 she announced that her ovaries and fallopian tubes had been removed, also to prevent the spread of cancer. Seen in LA in 2019
Back in 2008, she shared that she had undergone a double mastectomy for breast cancer.
She chose surgery over less invasive options in hopes of preventing the cancer from spreading in the future.
“It was really quick. It was one of those things that I woke up and it felt so right,” Applegate told CNN.
“It just seemed like, ‘I don’t want to have to deal with this again. I don’t want to keep putting this stuff in my body. I just want to be done with it’, and I just wanted to let her go.’
A decade later, she revealed that her ovaries and fallopian tubes had been removed, also to reduce her risk of cancer.
Christina Applegate’s ‘hard road’: what is multiple sclerosis (MS) and what are the symptoms?
MS is a disease that affects the brain and spinal cord and can cause a variety of possible symptoms, including problems with vision, arm or leg movement, sensation, or balance.
The immune system attacks the protective sheath (myelin) that surrounds nerve fibers, causing communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body.
It’s a lifelong condition that can sometimes lead to severe disability, although occasionally it can be mild.
A MS incidence study developed in partnership with Public Health England (PHE) estimates that 18% of all MS diagnoses in the UK occur in people under the age of 30. This compares to the previous estimate of just 12%.
There are 130,000 people living with MS in the UK and more than 1,250 people under the age of 30 were diagnosed in the last year alone, the charity estimates. It is the most common progressive neurological disease in young people today.
When MS is diagnosed, no one can predict how the disease will affect you, how disabled you will become, or how quickly you will become, and tens of thousands of people still have no treatment to help as their MS progresses.