Jamie-Lynn Sigler to play a doctor on 'Grey's Anatomy'

Former "Sopranos" star Jamie-Lynn Sigler, a Jericho native who in 2016 revealed she had been battling MS for 15 years, will play a doctor with that disease in the Jan. 15 episode of ABC’s long-running medical drama "Grey’s Anatomy."

Deadline reports that Sigler, 44, most recently a regular in the ABC crime drama "Big Sky," will play urologist Dr. Laura Kaplan in the season’s eighth episode, "Heavy on Me." Dr. Catherine Fox (Debbie Allen) invites Kaplan to Grey Sloan Memorial to consult on the cancer diagnosis of Fox’s husband, Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.).

The trade magazine said the role was tailored for Sigler without making it the character’s defining characteristic. ABC representatives for the series did not respond to a Newsday request for further information.

Sigler has emerged as an advocate for those with multiple sclerosis, a treatable but incurable autoimmune disease of the central nervous system, the symptoms of which can include loss of balance, muscle spasms and tremors and excessive fatigue. Since March 2024, she and Emmy Award winner Christina Applegate, a fellow MS sufferer, have hosted the podcast "MeSsy," about living with the condition. Sigler also hosts the podcast "Not Today, Pal" with her longtime friend and former "Sopranos" sibling, Robert Iler.

Sigler and her Manhasset-born husband, former baseball player Cutter Dykstra, son of Mets legend Lenny Dykstra, have two sons, Beau, 12, and Jack, 7.

When going public with the disease in January 2016, Sigler explained her reticence about revealing it for fear of it affecting her career. She has continued to appear in films and on TV, including playing a doctor in ABC’s 2020 series pilot "Triage."

While Sigler largely has been offscreen since her most recent episode of "Big Sky" aired in May 2022, she explained to People magazine the following year, "I’m slowly getting into the parenting stage of being a chauffeur" — waking the children at 6:30 a.m. after preparing their lunches and snacks, then making them breakfast before Dykstra takes them to school. "And then next thing you know, you look at your watch and the kids are on the bus and back home. And then it’s baseball or football or whatever it is. It’s a very full life."

She said at the time she was treating her symptoms with a monthly injection of the Novartis pharmaceutical Kesimpta.