Jericho's Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Christina Applegate, both diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, to launch podcast: 'We are sharing the deepest parts of ourselves'
Long Island native Jamie-Lynn Sigler, left, and Christina Applegate, who both have multiple sclerosis, are launching a podcast series. Credit: Amy Sussman / Getty Images; Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
Jericho native Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Emmy Award winner Christina Applegate, both high-profile performers who have gone public with their diagnoses of multiple sclerosis, are teaming up for a new podcast series that will be — and won’t be — about living with MS.
“We are two actresses who have this really fun sidebar called multiple sclerosis,” says former “Dead to Me” and “Married … with Children” star Applegate, 52, in a minute-long promo for “MeSsy,” premiering March 19, adding playfully, “This is our conversation about stuffs.”
“We all have something, and MS isn’t our only thing,” chimes in Sigler, 42, best known as daughter Meadow on HBO’s “The Sopranos.” “This isn’t a show that’s just going to be about MS. We’re going to have so many laughs, some cries and some truly incredible … guests, including friends and former co-stars. We’re all just trying to make it through. So join us through the messiness of life.”
The show’s production company, Wishbone, describes the podcast as the two stars “getting vulnerable about the curveballs that life can throw … theirs just happens to be MS," and promises weekly “conversations with each other, friends, co-stars, and the people that keep them going through the messiness of life.”
Sigler went public in 2016 with her treatable but incurable autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system, for which symptoms can include loss of balance, muscle spasms and tremors, and excessive fatigue. After Applegate announced in August 2021 that she had been diagnosed with MS, her friend, former *NSYNC boy-band member Lance Bass, suggested reaching out to Sigler.
“MS brought us together,” Sigler told People magazine in an article posted Monday, saying, “I wanted to give her tools and things that I've learned that have helped me.”
“We have each other and that's helped us so much,” said eight-time Emmy nominee Applegate, who won the award for a guest spot on “Friends.” “We would talk on the phone for two hours, and we'd be laughing and crying and we were, like, ‘This is helping us. Let's record this. Let's do it.’ ” Sigler lauded “the way that Christina disarms me and allows me to talk about the hard stuff.”
The podcast is “not about the specific experience we're having,” Sigler avowed. “It’s us facing something hard and it’s about figuring out how to still push through. I've never been more … nervous isn’t the word, but like a good anxious about any project I’ve ever put out more than this, because I care so deeply about it. We are sharing the deepest parts of ourselves.”
Among the guests, said People, will be actor-comedian Martin Short and Sigler’s former TV mom, the Northport- and West Islip-raised Edie Falco.
Applegate — who has said she likely will never perform on-screen again but may do voice-over work — earned plaudits as the presenter for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series at the Emmy Awards on Jan. 15, receiving a standing ovation as she walked onstage using a cane, on the arm of a tuxedoed handler.
She told the audience with dark humor, “You're totally shaming me with [the fact of my] disability by standing up,” and later broke into tears at the crowd’s rapturous response to her.
