Christina Applegate is a child of Los Angeles, and one of her most salient memories of growing up here is of standing on the Hollywood Walk of Fame while waiting to go into a movie. In a recent interview, she recalls going to see “Star Wars,” which had a line that snaked around the block. “That’s where you went,” Applegate, 50, says of trekking to Hollywood’s movie theaters. “And you stood on those stars, and you thought: ‘Who are these people? Did they do something magical?’”
Over the course of Applegate’s career — she received her SAG card at age 5 in 1976, and in April 1987 “Married … With Children” launched her into stardom for 35 years and counting — she has indeed done myriad magical things. She’s received six Emmy nominations for acting, winning in 2003 for guest actress in a comedy series for her portrayal of Amy, Rachel’s (Jennifer Aniston) thoughtless, narcissistic sister on “Friends”; starred in numerous films (the ’90s cult classic “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” and the “Anchorman” movies among them) and she’s even been nominated for a Tony award for the 2005 Broadway revival of “Sweet Charity.” She’s also the star and executive producer of the Emmy-nominated Netflix sensation “Dead to Me,” the third and final season of which will drop Nov. 17.
It’s for these reasons (and many more) that Applegate will receive her own star on the Walk of Fame Nov. 14, an honor that — when it was first announced in June 2019, long before the pandemic — she tweeted had been a “childhood dream.”
The ceremony was originally meant to take place in 2020 and was canceled for the reasons everything was that year. Since then, much has changed for Applegate. Receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in spring 2021, shortly after she’d begun filming the last season of “Dead to Me” — the Liz Feldman creation in which Applegate plays the sharp-witted Jen Harding — she says working on the show was as “hard as you would possibly think it would be.”
She was “sleeping all the time,” and could barely walk — she had to use a wheelchair to get to set. “I got diagnosed while we were working,” Applegate says. “I had to call everybody and be like, ‘I have multiple sclerosis guys. Like, what the fuck!’ And then it was about kind of learning — all of us learning — what I was going to be capable of doing.”
No one forced her to continue; it was in fact the opposite, she says: “They were gonna pull the plug, you know?”
“Because it was like torture — and they felt like they were torturing me, too,” Applegate continues, fighting through the emotion in her voice. “But I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no: We have to finish this story. It’s too important to our hearts; too important to our souls. And we have to give this gift, not only to ourselves — there are people that love these characters, and we’ve got to let them have their closure too.’ So, if that meant me having to take a break in the middle of the day so I could go sleep — or me just leaving because I couldn’t do anymore — then that’s what we had to do.”
On “Dead to Me,” Linda Cardellini plays Judy Hale, the yang to Applegate’s yin as Jen, and portraying best friends — almost life partners — on the show has brought them close. “It was a really emotional, beautiful show, filled with lots of crazy things happening — in life, and onscreen,” Cardellini says. “We were really lucky to have that, and we were lucky to have that together.”
About Applegate’s drive to finish to the series, “Dead to Me” executive producer Will Ferrell, and the star and co-writer (with Adam McKay) of the “Anchorman” movies, says, “The words that come to mind are grit, fearlessness, passion — a funny mother eff’n badass.”
McKay, also a “Dead to Me” EP, got to know Applegate when he cast her in “Anchorman,” his feature directing debut. He’s not surprised by her determination to finish her work on the Netflix tragicomedy.
“This stuff is personal — this is who she is,” he says. “The fact that she’s struggling with this recent diagnosis, and yet this show is going to just play and people are going to enjoy it? Yeah, she’s kind of unstoppable.”
As McKay thinks about the arc of Applegate’s career, he observes that she’s “reinvented herself, like, four times!” He then adds: “When you think of, ‘Who’s the spine of this town? Who are the people that have been here doing quality work consistently?’ I think of Christina.”
For Applegate, getting the star means “leaving your mark.” She mentions past honors she’s received, all of which, “are great,” of course. “But this was more,” she says. “This is something that is going to be there forever. And it’s something my daughter can go see when I’m gone.”
There’s also the added significance of the ceremony itself, for reasons she never could have foreseen: It will be Applegate’s public debut as a person with MS.
“Now my life is a different story,” she says. “People are going to see me for the first time as a disabled person, and it’s very difficult. So, for me, two years ago would have been so much better!” Applegate tends to speak quickly, but here she hesitates, and then adds: “But maybe this time it’s more poignant. I don’t know.”
It certainly is poignant— especially since the eve of “Dead to Me’s” final run has Applegate wondering whether Jen will be her last big role: “I’m pretty convinced that this was it, you know?”
That doesn’t mean it’s the end of her career, though: Sony has an animated version of “Married …With Children” in development in which she’d reprise her iconic role as Kelly Bundy (“We’re hoping that that works!”), and she wants to keep producing: “I’ve got a lot of ideas in my mind, and I just need to get them executed.” As of now, she’s been devoting her time to her 11-year-old daughter. “I love being here for her 100%, all the time,” Applegate says.
Nor is she truly ruling out acting forever. “I’m just a newbie to all of this,” she says. “I’m trying to figure it out — and I’m also in mourning for the person that I was. I have to find a place that’s as loving as my set was, where they won’t think I’m a diva by saying, ‘Hey, I can only work five hours.’”
And what was it like to say goodbye to “Dead to Me”? “Oh, my God — it’s on camera!” Applegate says, laughing joyously. She describes the final scene between her and Cardellini — no spoilers here, don’t worry — as two friends just talking: “Moments that were real,” she says.
“We were talking to each other, and they were like, ‘You know, you’re crying kind of a lot, you guys!’” Applegate remembers. “And we’re like, ‘We can’t stop, sorry! That’s what’s going to happen. This is happening! We are saying goodbye.’
“And it was a whole crew, sobbing. Everybody.”
TIP SHEET:
WHAT: Christina Applegate receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
WHEN: 11:30 a.m. Nov. 14
WHERE: 7007 Hollywood Blvd.
WEB: walkoffame.com
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