Christina Applegate, Told She Never Had MS, Says She Feels Like a “Fraud”

Christina Applegate spent nearly six years as one of the best-known faces of multiple sclerosis. Now that doctors have told her she does not have it, she says she is struggling to let go of the identity.

“Talk about being a fraud. I don’t even have it anymore. Geez,” Applegate, 54, said on the Nov. 3 episode of “MeSsy,” the podcast she co-hosts with “The Sopranos” alum Jamie-Lynn Sigler, according to Us Weekly.

The line was a response to the episode’s guest, Jack Osbourne, 40, who was diagnosed with MS in April 2012 at 26. Osbourne said he sometimes feels like a fraud himself at MS events because his own case has been comparatively mild. “It hasn’t stopped me, and it hasn’t really slowed me down. There’s been windows that it has,” he said, according to Radar Online.

Osbourne told Applegate that she “still qualifies.” Sigler, who has MS, called her an “honorary member.” Applegate said she would stay involved. “I’ll never leave this community,” she said. “I’ve made so many lifelong friends, and I care so deeply about everybody that we represent and that I represent.”

She also described how hard the change has been. “I lived as a person with MS for almost six years,” she said. “It’s hard for me to try to, like, shake that identity because it’s been my identity for so long.”

Applegate announced her MS diagnosis in August 2021. She disclosed the misdiagnosis on the Oct. 20 episode of “MeSsy,” saying a doctor had walked into her room and said, “Congratulations, you don’t have MS.” She said she was not relieved. “You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of a sudden I’m better,” she said then. “I haven’t gotten better, Jamie! If anything, I’ve gotten worse.”

On the Nov. 3 episode she told Osbourne that she was back at “square one.” She is being tested one by one for what she called the “sister diseases” to MS, conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and Lyme disease that can produce similar symptoms. “I’m being tested for all that stuff slowly but surely,” she said. She has not said what her doctors now believe is causing her symptoms.

Groubert has been critical of how celebrities talk about MS and returned to the theme with Applegate. He said MS had replaced Lyme disease as the fashionable celebrity illness. He argued that some public figures attach themselves to a diagnosis later in their careers, when work has slowed, partly to belong to a community.

He was careful, more than once, to separate that critique from the disease. “Doesn’t mean that MS doesn’t exist. Doesn’t mean that your cousin Luke doesn’t have it. Doesn’t mean it’s not a real illness,” he said.

Groubert focused on the language of the podcast exchange: “qualifies,” “honorary member,” “this community.” He said the vocabulary reminded him of a closed group, while again adding that MS itself is no such thing. He also said he had met Osbourne a couple of times and had seen him on physically demanding reality television, where he looked active. Osbourne has said his symptoms have been relatively mild.

His bluntest remark came after he read Applegate’s description of the new round of testing. “So this is a girl in search of a disease, if I could bluntly say that,” he said. When a viewer wrote in that her husband had died after 12 years of primary progressive MS, Groubert answered directly. “I’m not minimizing the existence of MS,” he said, adding that his point concerned celebrity behavior, not patients.

Groubert said he would keep following Applegate’s story. Applegate has said her symptoms have not improved. She has not announced a new diagnosis.