Christina Applegate has spent the last five years as one of the most recognizable faces of multiple sclerosis, so the news she shared on Tuesday, October 20, landed hard. Back behind the microphone of her MeSsy podcast after a seven-month absence, the 54-year-old told co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler that doctors now say the diagnosis she announced in 2021 was wrong. Her voice broke as she recounted the moment a doctor walked into her room with the news. “She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,'” Applegate recalled, according to People.
Most people would expect that sentence to bring a wave of relief. For Applegate, it did something else entirely, and the reason why says a great deal about what she has lived through since she first went public.
How Did Kelly Bundy Become the Face of MS?
Long before any of this, Applegate was the teenager who made a whole generation laugh. She was only 15 when Married… with Children premiered on Fox in 1987, and for 11 seasons she played Kelly Bundy, the gum-snapping, blissfully clueless daughter of Al and Peg. By the time the show signed off in 1997, she had grown up in front of America, and Kelly had become the character fans still shout about at reunions.
She worked hard to avoid being typecast once the show ended. Her NBC sitcom Jesse ran from 1998 to 2000, and a guest turn as Rachel’s sister Amy on Friends won her an Emmy in 2003. Then, in 2019, Netflix gave her the role many younger viewers know her for: Jen Harding, the grieving, furious widow at the heart of the dark comedy Dead to Me.
It was on that set that something started to feel off. Applegate later told The New York Times that she felt unsteady while rehearsing a dance sequence for the show, and she looked back on those warning signs with regret. “I wish I had paid attention,” she said. By the summer of 2021 she had a name for what was happening, or so everyone believed.
What Happened After the 2021 Diagnosis?
On August 10, 2021, Applegate went to Twitter with a short message that stopped her fans cold. “Hi friends. A few months ago I was diagnosed with MS,” she wrote, as reported by PBS NewsHour and CBC. “It’s been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition.”
She went back and finished the third and final season of Dead to Me anyway, and it reached Netflix in November 2022. When she walked onstage with a cane at the Emmy Awards in January 2024, the audience rose to its feet. Applegate answered the standing ovation with a wisecrack worthy of the Bundy house. “You’re totally shaming me with disability by standing up,” she joked, according to CBS News.
That same year she launched MeSsy with Sigler, the former Sopranos star who was diagnosed with MS at 20. The two women talked openly about pain, exhaustion and the parts of the illness that don’t show. Applegate even called them “the poster children for MS” on this week’s episode.
This year brought harder news. Her memoir, You With the Sad Eyes, came out in March 2026, and soon after Sigler announced the podcast would take a short break. Reports followed that Applegate was in the hospital. She broke her silence on Instagram in April, writing that “Health issues are a constant for me” and that she was “getting stronger and better every day,” according to People. By August, a source told People that she was home and “doing very well,” and we shared the good news here as well. Sigler carried the podcast on her own with guests while her friend recovered. According to People, Applegate used that time away to “process” what her doctors had told her.
Why Didn’t the News Bring Her Relief?
The answer is plain and heartbreaking. Being told she does not have MS did not make her any better. “I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy,” she told Sigler, according to People. “Nothing magical happened when she said, ‘You don’t have MS.’ Nothing magical happened.”
Applegate was blunt about where that leaves her. “You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better,” she said. “I haven’t gotten better, Jamie! If anything, I’ve gotten worse. So I’m back at square one where I don’t know what’s going on with me.” Variety also reported her remarks and noted that her doctors will now work to find out what has actually been causing her symptoms since 2021. She has not shared a new diagnosis.
The years in between took a real toll. “I’ve gone through a great depression because of it,” she said, and she counted what the illness had cost her. “I lost my job.” Even now, she explained, “I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor’s office.”
What seemed to weigh on her most was the MS community, the many people who had found comfort in watching her and Sigler talk honestly about the disease. “It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down,” Applegate said through tears.
Fans who grew up with Kelly Bundy, and the many MS patients who heard their own stories in hers, would surely tell her otherwise. She never asked to be anyone’s symbol. All she ever did was tell the truth about how hard her days were, and on Tuesday she did it again, with no answer yet and her friend Jamie right beside her.
