Actress Christina Applegate will write about her experience with MS in a new memoir.
The 53-year-old’s debut memoir You With the Sad Eyes will cover her early years growing up in Hollywood and her perseverance through abandonment, breast cancer, abuse, body dysmorphia and assault.
“I decided to write this book when I was forced to slow down,” the Dead to Me star wrote in a media release announcing the book.
“I’ve had a career in TV and film since I was 3 years old, and I loved it. But with MS, all the things I thought were important shifted,” she continued. “For a long time, it felt impossible to find the meaning in everything I’ve been through, but for the first time in my life I’ve been able to stop and reflect.”
The Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead star said she’d realised she’s “packed a lot into these 50-something years”.
“It’s scary — not gonna lie — to finally decide to tell it all,” she said. “But it will be real. It will be filled with the ups and downs, the humour and grief of life.”
Little, Brown and Company’s executive editor, Bryn Clark, said she knew the actress’s book was special after reading the opening paragraphs.
“As an editor, I’m always chasing the elusive feeling of ‘I have to have this.’ You only know it when you see it, and I knew Christina’s book was it the second I read her opening words,” she said in a statement.
“You With the Sad Eyes balances the heavy and the hilarity with perfect nuance,” she added. “Christina speaks to the power of embracing the messiness and temporality of life instead of hiding behind the plastic veneer of our modern world. We have no time to waste on falsehoods and perfection.”
Christina was diagnosed with MS in 2021 and has openly talked about the experience in interview appearances since.
Earlier this year, the Married With Children star said living with MS is the hardest challenge she’s faced in her life so far.
“This is the worst thing I’ve ever had in my life. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever gone through,” she said during an appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast. “If people saw what my life was like on the daily, they wouldn’t … they wouldn’t be able to do it. Because I can sometimes not do it. It’s really, really hard.”
“I don’t really leave the house anymore.”
In the podcast, Christina also shared that her The Sweetest Thing costar, Selma Blair, initially encouraged her to seek medical attention after she experienced dizziness and numbness in her toes. Selma was diagnosed with MS in 2018.
“She said, ‘Can you please go to the neurologist?’ And I was like, ‘There’s no way that both of us from the same movie have MS,'” she explained.
On her podcast MesSy, the 53-year-old said she first started noticing symptoms on the set of her hit Netflix show, Dead To Me. She even recalled falling over while running through a field in the middle of a scene.
“Hi, first sign of MS! So, not to bring everybody down, but there it was,” she said in a discussion with the show’s creator, Liz Feldman.
You With the Sad Eyes will be released in March 2026.
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