Christina Applegate Opens Up On The Loss Of Her Father

Christina Applegate is going through a very emotional chapter in her life — one filled with loss, pain, and raw honesty. The 53-year-old actress, known and loved for her roles in Anchorman and Married… With Children, revealed on her podcast MeSsy that her father, Robert “Bobby” Applegate, passed away recently at the age of 82.

Fighting back tears, Christina shared the heartbreaking news with her co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler and guest JoAnna Garcia Swisher during the episode. “I haven’t cried yet about it,” she said, her voice breaking. “We knew he was going to die. Is that an excuse for not feeling?”

This was the first time Christina had let her emotions surface about her dad’s passing, which she said happened just about a week before the recording. “Because you kind of know someone’s going to go, and you’ve said your goodbyes,” she explained, trying to make sense of the grief she had been holding in.

Swisher gently shared that when she lost a parent, she also felt like she was in a strange, foggy place — something Christina deeply connected with.

Christina, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2021, is no stranger to emotional challenges. She first began to notice symptoms while filming her hit Netflix show Dead to Me. In fact, she remembers falling during a scene in the pilot episode, running through a field as her character Jen Harding. “Hi, first sign of MS!” she said.

Director Liz Feldman remembered Christina struggling with balance on set but initially chalked it up to long, exhausting workdays. “We’d been shooting probably 14 or 15 hours,” Liz recalled. “It seemed completely reasonable that anybody would be collapsing.”

But Christina knew it wasn’t. That stumble was one of the earliest hints of the disease that would change her life. Still, she pushed through, filming the entire final season of Dead to Me after her diagnosis. She’s called that experience “cathartic,” saying, “The beauty of Dead to Me is that it gave me almost this weird platform of dealing with it.”

Now, through MeSsy, the podcast she co-hosts with fellow MS warrior Jamie-Lynn, Christina is finding new strength in vulnerability. She explained why the show exists in the first place: “When we hold in feelings of despair, we give those feelings incredible power…And by just sharing we free ourselves.”

Christina closed her heartfelt message with love and encouragement for anyone going through something hard. “Never feel alone. There is always an ear somewhere.”