Christina Applegate isn’t mincing words: She “was quitting” acting prior to landing her role on Netflix’s Dead to Me.
“Let’s be honest. I was like, ‘I’m done.’ I didn’t want to do it anymore,” the Emmy nominee tells EW on the latest episode of The Awardist podcast, crediting Dead to Me creator Liz Feldman for seeing her for more than what she was being offered.
On the final season of the “traumedy,” as Applegate says costar Linda Cardellini described the show’s genre, Applegate’s Jen and Cardellini’s Judy deal with the escalating police investigation into Steve’s (James Marsden) death. If that wasn’t enough, Judy is battling cancer, which she eventually finds out is terminal, and Jen is shocked to learn she is pregnant by Ben, Steve’s twin brother (naturally, James Marsden). Through it all, Jen and Judy’s friendship never wavers — they are the epitome of “ride or die.” In fact, they ride together to Mexico, where the two spend a few days together before Jen wakes one morning to discover that Judy has — seemingly — left to spare Jen the grief of watching her friend die.
While the series has wrapped and viewers (mostly) know what happened to the two characters, Applegate isn’t as certain about what fate awaits her. Five years ago she was ready to quit the industry because of a lack of good roles coming her way; now, she is more worried about her professional future because of MS, which she learned about while filming season 3 of the show. While the production made accommodations, their kindness, she says, set the bar “pretty high” and she’s hesitant to think any others “would have that kind of understanding.”
Below, read portions of our interview, where Applegate reveals whether she has any unfinished business with Jen, how the show became an escape for her, whether she still finds comedy difficult after years of starring in comedic shows and movies, her inspirations, and more.
An interview with Christina Applegate, Cameron Diaz, and Selma Blair has just been released by Entertainment Weekly.
Before the women of Girls Trip taught us about grapefruiting and the Bridesmaids pooped in a sink, Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, and Selma Blair were doing it with furries and singing about male genitalia in The Sweetest Thing.
In the 2002 comedy, Diaz starred as the promiscuous Christina Walters, who meets potential soul mate Peter Donahue (Thomas Jane) and enlists her best friend, Courtney (Applegate), to road-trip to what they think is his brother Roger’s (Jason Bateman) wedding. They also try to help their newly single friend Jane (Blair) get back on the elephant, er, horse.
Read their interview at EW.com.
An interview with the writer of the 2002 film, “The Sweetest Thing,” was published by Entertainment Weekly recently.
The Sweetest Thing, written by Nancy Pimental and directed by Roger Kumble, ended up standing the test of time partly because it inspired a new generation of girls behaving badly films. As the forerunner to movies like Bridemaids, Girls Trip, and Bad Moms, The Sweetest Thing gave an unabashed inside look at how women really behave.
“The film really has such a crazy cult following, because it didn’t really do great in the theaters, but it’s pretty amazing how it still lives on in the privacy of people’s homes,” Pimental tells EW.
But Pimental says she intended for The Sweetest Thing to be a very different film than what ended up in theaters, and also subsequently on an unrated version of the DVD.