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The dark comedy “Dead to Me,” which completed its third and final season on Netflix, is a riot of heartbreak, comedy, mayhem and wild plot twists. Star Christina Applegate can relate all too well.

She plays real estate agent Jen Harding, prickly on her best days, and raging with grief after the death of her husband. Jen’s path crosses that of Linda Cardellini’s Judy Hale, a free-spirited artist who’s holding her own pain, along with one hell of a secret. Themes of friendship and loss play out in unexpectedly personal ways from the moment the two women meet.

That could also describe the actors’ relationship. “I cry when I talk about Linda because I love her so much,” says Applegate, speaking by phone from her Los Angeles home. “The next person who gets to work with her, I hope they realize how incredibly lucky they are, because not only is she an incredible human but she’s a divine artist and is right there, present for you, no matter what.”

In the middle of shooting the show’s last season in 2021, Applegate began having leg pain and tremors. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. After a break in filming to absorb the news and begin treatment, she insisted on returning to complete the series. The actor, who’s been working practically since birth, had to rely on others as never before, letting the production know what she could and couldn’t do. “They were incredible,” she says of the crew, led by creator and showrunner Liz Feldman, whom she calls “Jen and Judy combined into a human, in the most perfect and beautiful way possible.”

Applegate notes she has never worked harder on a job. “I was a wreck every day, but most of that wreck would take place in my trailer by myself. But there were times I’d break down on set and be like, ‘I can’t, we have to take a break, I need a half-hour,’ and everyone was so loving that it was OK.”

Despite the difficulties, she was buoyed by moments on set with Cardellini, and scenes between the two of them took on added resonance. “There is really never a moment when Judy and Jen are talking to each other that it wasn’t Linda and Christina talking to each other,” Applegate says. “The set disappeared, everyone kind of disappeared, and it was the two of us as best friends, supporting each other, loving each other and saying goodbye to each other. I’d like to say there was skill involved, but really, Linda and I just disappeared.”

She explains that throughout the series, the two have held each other up during rough periods in their lives. This last season, “She literally pulled me under her wing and protected me, and took care of me every single day,” Applegate says. “Also the tables were turned: Jen is taking care of her friend who’s dying, yet Linda was taking care of me as I was saying goodbye to the person that I’d always known — so part of me was dying.”

With comedic timing honed over four decades, Applegate then turns on a dime: “But no, it’s skill, because I’m nominated for a SAG Award, it’s skill! Skill! Technique! Skill!” she shouts, before dissolving into laughter. (She’s been nominated for female actor in a comedy series three times in a row for “Dead to Me.”) “Please put ‘ha ha’ after ‘skill,’ because I don’t want people to think I’m sitting here tooting my own horn. It’s a joke.”

She joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1975; this is her sixth nod. “When you go to that particular event, it’s all your people — you don’t have anybody but the actors there. And despite the reputation actors have, everyone is really lovely.” Her daughter Sadie will be her date, mostly because the 12-year-old hopes to meet her idol, Natasha Lyonne.

“It’s my last awards show as an actor probably, so it’s kind of a big deal,” Applegate says. “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.” She’s considering next steps: producing, development, “doing a s— ton of voice-overs to make some cash to make sure that my daughter’s fed and we’re homed.” And she spends a lot of time in bed, bingeing all the reality shows she’s never seen.

But it took months before she could watch her own show’s last season. “I don’t like seeing myself struggling,” she says. “Also, I gained 40 pounds because of inactivity and medications, and I didn’t look like myself, and I didn’t feel like myself.” She watched alone, stopping periodically when it became too painful. “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.”

If Jen Harding is, indeed, Applegate’s last role, it’s a masterful way to go out — a culmination of all her experience, hard work, love, commitment and, yes, skill. No joke.

Source: LA Times

Christina Applegate began acting as a small child, but when “Married … With Children” premiered on Fox on April 5, 1987 as the nascent network’s first primetime show, she officially began her 35-years-and-counting career. After playing the iconic dummy Kelly Bundy for 11 seasons, she went on to other starring roles on television (“Jesse,” “Samantha Who?” and “Dead to Me”), in film (in the “Anchorman” and “Bad Moms” movies, most notably) and was nominated for a Tony for the 2005 Broadway revival of “Sweet Charity.”

For this work — and much more — Applegate, 50, will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Nov. 14. It’s the fulfillment of “a lifelong dream,” Applegate said, one born out of standing on the Walk of Fame while waiting in line as a kid to see movies on Hollywood Boulevard. “I remember going, ‘I want to have one of these!’” she recalled. “My whole childhood was like that — wow, these stars.”

The ceremony will also mark Applegate’s debut in public “as a disabled person,” she said. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, and because of that illness, filming the final season of “Dead to Me” became a near impossibility: After all, she could barely walk. Yet “Dead to Me” — created by Liz Feldman, and costarring Linda Cardellini — will in fact premiere on Netflix on Nov. 17, after Applegate determinedly fought her way through filming the tragicomedy’s third and last season.

“Dead to Me” has always been about women’s friendships, and Season 3 of the show will reflect that more than ever. “It kind of became profound in its own sense,” Applegate said about bringing “Dead to Me” to its conclusion. “It was really Linda and I talking to each other a lot. Moments that were real.”

In a recent interview with Variety, Applegate discussed her career, working with MS, whether “Dead to Me” is her final starring role — and being a co-founder of the Pussycat Dolls.

When Christina Applegate looks back, she can recognize the signs. Filming a dance sequence during the first season of the Netflix wine-mom dramedy “Dead to Me,” she found herself off balance. Later, her tennis game began to falter. At the time, Applegate, an actress with an aversion to special pleading, didn’t make excuses. She had to work harder, she told herself. She had to try again.

“I wish I had paid attention,” she said 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,’” Applegate, 50, recalled. “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.”

This was on a recent morning. Applegate was sitting up in bed — her happy place, where she watches reality television. (“That’s my meditation,” she said.) She had pulled her hair into a scrappy bun. Black glasses sat astride her nose. And her resting face did have a certain indignant quality.

But she wanted to do this interview, because the last season of “Dead to Me” arrives on Netflix later this month, on Nov. 17.

“This is the first time anyone’s going to see me the way I am,” she said. “I put on 40 pounds; I can’t walk without a cane. I want people to know that I am very aware of all of that.”

In truth, her illness is nearly invisible onscreen — a feat of savvy blocking and Applegate’s talent and resolve. Still, she wanted to offer context.

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Christina Applegate Reveals How Her Daughter Found out She Was Famous & Her Rules If She Wants to Be an Actress

Christina Applegate recently appeared on the podcast by RuPaul called “What’s the Tee?”

You can listen to her episode below.