{"id":629705,"date":"2026-03-03T17:44:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/629705\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T17:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:44:20","slug":"christina-applegates-book-unpacks-trauma-abuse-and-struggles-with-ms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/629705\/","title":{"rendered":"Christina Applegate’s book unpacks trauma, abuse and struggles with MS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the Shelf<\/p>\n

You With the Sad Eyes<\/p>\n

By Christina Applegate
Little Brown: 304 pages, $32<\/p>\n

If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org<\/a>, whose fees support independent bookstores.<\/p>\n

Christina Applegate is where she spent many listless, painful nights over the last year working on her memoir: in bed. She passes most of her days inside a bedroom of her Laurel Canyon home. And it\u2019s already not a great day when we connect over video conference in late February \u2014 no day is free from the exhaustion and symptoms of multiple sclerosis, the autoimmune disease she was diagnosed with in 2021. This particular afternoon, she says, is \u201ccrap on a cracker.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sick as a big ol\u2019 dog,\u201d she explains. She raises up a heating pad \u2014 nicknamed Jake Ryan after the brooding heartthrob in \u201cSixteen Candles\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s been warming her body. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe dies a lot,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then we have to get a new Jake Ryan. He\u2019s actually on my abdomen right now and making me happy. I love Jake Ryan. He\u2019s really my bestie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

He may provide near-constant heat therapy, but readers of \u201cYou With the Sad Eyes,\u201d she says, may take on the role of therapists. For the nearly 300-page memoir, the 54-year-old actor broke open her personal journals, which she has kept since she was 13, and in turn, the vault that is her personal history to share her story. And it was not an easy story to tell. Yes, it\u2019s brushed with the unbridled humor and candor that fans of the Emmy-winning actor with a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that includes \u201cMarried … With Children\u201d and \u201cDead to Me\u201d<\/a> have come to expect. But it finds the star unpacking dark chapters \u2014 an absent father, a chaotic home life, sexual abuse she experienced as a child, body image struggles, an abusive boyfriend \u2014 before reaching her life-altering MS diagnosis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book is not cathartic for me \u2014 let\u2019s just go there,\u201d Applegate says. \u201cI just needed to dump this s\u2014 out somewhere. It\u2019s almost like you guys are now my therapists in the world. Also, I feel like so many people have gone through this [stuff], obviously \u2014 I didn\u2019t write this book for that. But let\u2019s f\u2014 come together, man, as kids of abuse, molestation \u2014 all these things \u2014 and really see each other and not feel so f\u2014 alone. But I didn\u2019t write this for that. I wrote it because someone said, \u2018Do you want to write a book?\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, if I\u2019m going to write a book, it\u2019s going to have to start from Day 1.\u2019 And Day 1 ain\u2019t pretty. … There\u2019s going to be really f\u2014 horrible s\u2014 and then we\u2019re going to have fun stuff \u2014 because that\u2019s what my editor told me to have (that\u2019s a joke!) \u2014 and crap again. That\u2019s my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Christina Applegate as a baby with her mother, Nancy Priddy.<\/p>\n

(Little, Brown & Co.)<\/p>\n

The fun stuff? The book sprinkles some dishy and amusing moments amid the emotional heft \u2014 whether she\u2019s reflecting on her crush on Johnny Depp, who was eight years her senior, or the time she ditched Brad Pitt, her date at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, for rocker Sebastian Bach. There are glimmers of light too \u2014 namely her daughter Sadie with husband Martyn LeNoble. <\/p>\n

But trauma was a part of Applegate\u2019s story early on. She grew up in L.A.\u2019s storied bohemian enclave and music mecca Laurel Canyon \u2014 her father, Bob, was a music promoter turned producer, while her mother, Nancy, was a singer and actor. It was an upbringing marred by instability, pain and trauma. Her father left the family when she was a baby; her mother, whom Applegate writes about with empathy and tenderness, struggled with drug and alcohol abuse and the long-term effects of an abusive relationship \u2014 \u201cHe was the worst man imaginable\u201d she writes in the book of her \u201cstep-father\u201d from ages 3 to 7. \u201cThe safety supplied by my beautiful mother was critically challenged by the presence of this man who moved into our lives and brought with him a universe of hurt and danger.\u201d The absence of a support system during this time meant Applegate was sometimes left in questionable care. In a chapter titled \u201cLaLa Land,\u201d she reveals that, at age 5, a female \u201ccaregiver\u201d forced Applegate to perform oral sex on her. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love my dad. He was peripheral. He was wonderful. He passed away last year and I really don\u2019t want to talk about him,\u201d Applegate says under the glow of her screen. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t have parents. I had a mom and she was it. Through all her stuff, she was right there. I love that lady. She\u2019s 84 now and my heart\u2019s starting to break.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her eyes show it. <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

One of the journal entries written by a young Christina Applegate as seen in \u201cYou With the Sad Eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Little, Brown & Co.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the powerful throughline in the book, the recurring reference to its Cyndi Lauper-inspired title \u2014 the sadness in Applegate\u2019s eyes. She notes it at various moments to emphasize the accumulation of emotional weight, including the grief of being stuck in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship during the height of \u201cMarried… With Children.\u201d She\u2019d untangle the inner turmoil in her journal entries in ways that, at times, feel foreboding: \u201cMaybe it\u2019s just the long hours I have been spending on my bed thinking about my illness, but in reading these words from more than three decades ago, I find that I suffer a kind of concussive awareness of the future impact of all these dark events from my early life,\u201d she writes in the book.<\/p>\n

Just as the painful moments of her life took shape at an early age, so too did a refuge from it. She\u2019s been acting since infancy, making her on-screen debut at 3 months old in 1972, playing a baby boy alongside her mother in an episode of \u201cDays of Our Lives\u201d; by kindergarten, Applegate became a member of the Screen Actors Guild. The fictional worlds she got lost in would become an instrumental escape from her reality at various points in her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou pull up your big-girl panties and you do what you got to do,\u201d Applegate says. \u201cYou get up at 6 or 5 or 9, or whatever it is, and you get down there and you focus and you\u2019re a team player. Whatever is happening at home, you don\u2019t bring it there.\u201d <\/p>\n

Her career really began to flourish by the late 1980s and early \u201890s when, despite having an aversion to comedy and initially turning down the role, she starred as Kelly Bundy<\/a> in \u201cMarried… With Children,\u201d the boundary-pushing sitcom that was critical to establishing nascent Fox\u2019s identity. After playing the ultra-cool and shallow character for 11 seasons, she went on to other starring roles in films (\u201cDon\u2019t Tell Mom the Babysitter\u2019s Dead,\u201d as well as the \u201cAnchorman\u201d and \u201cBad Moms\u201d movies) and television (\u201cJesse,\u201d \u201cSamantha Who?,\u201d \u201cUp All Night\u201d and \u201cDead to Me\u201d), and was nominated for a Tony for the 2005 Broadway revival of \u201cSweet Charity.\u201d It all led to Applegate, in 2022, receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a goal she was chasing since 1977, when she spotted scores of them on a drive to then-Grauman\u2019s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to watch \u201cStar Wars\u201d with her mom as a child. She hasn\u2019t acted since wrapping Netflix\u2019s \u201cDead to Me\u201d in 2022 \u2014 it was during production on the show\u2019s third and final season that she received her diagnosis and began treatment. <\/p>\n

1 <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

2 <\/p>\n

\"Christina <\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> A photo of a young Christina Applegate from her memoir, \u201cYou With the Sad Eyes.\u201d 2.<\/strong> Christina Applegate receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which she discusses in her book. (Little, Brown & Co.) <\/p>\n

But more than acting, she says, dance was a vital part of her identity. For most of her adult life, she\u2019s had a dance studio in her house. She\u2019ll still dance here and there, as much as her body allows. But mostly she\u2019ll watch Bob Fosse dance on a loop while curled up in bed. <\/p>\n

Does she dream about dancing?<\/p>\n

\u201cYvonne, are you trying to f\u2014 me up?\u201d she deadpans. \u201cYou\u2019re making me cry about stuff. Of course I miss dance. It\u2019s something Sadie and I would do together, like, five years ago and now I can\u2019t. It\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Applegate talks about living with MS \u2014 whether in interviews, in the book or on the podcast \u201cMeSsy,\u201d which she co-hosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who also lives with the disease \u2014 with more bluntness than how she approached discussing her journey with breast cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 2008 at age 36. There\u2019s no sugarcoating. No platitudes about blessings. Just the truth. For her, it\u2019s just one piece of a larger effort to get people to connect honestly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just feel like, when I\u2019m talking about this, the way that I do talk about it,\u201d she says. \u201cOur listeners from the \u2018MeSsy\u2019 podcast go, \u2018Thank you, Christina, this does f\u2014 suck!\u2019 Let\u2019s just vent to each other. Because I was full of s\u2014 on \u2018Oprah,\u2019 I was full of s\u2014 on \u2018GMA\u2019 [Good Morning America] when I had breast cancer. I was trying to keep myself up by saying those things. I realized I was not helping anyone. Or maybe it was. If I inspired you in some way, fantastic, please take it. But I wasn\u2019t inspiring myself. I was sad and I was full of s\u2014. We need a community. We need a bunch of us talking to each other \u2014 caretakers and children of people with MS and all this stuff. I just want to have a kumbaya with everybody right now because there\u2019s so much sadness with this disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she doesn\u2019t want to delve too deeply about her experience with it at this juncture, she says \u2014 a publicist chimes in to mention Applegate will be launching a new online platform, Next in MS, where others can detail their own experience living with the disease; she\u2019ll share more about her journey and what she\u2019s learned then.<\/p>\n

Wearing glasses and her hair pulled back in a top-knot, and backed by a tall headboard, Applegate grows more enthusiastic when the conversation turns to a lighter topic: reality TV. It was her other constant companion while working on the book. \u201cThe Traitors,\u201d \u201cReal Housewives,\u201d \u201cBelow Deck\u201d \u2014 \u201canything on Bravo,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s all I need.\u201d When I say I am a couple of episodes behind on \u201cThe Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,\u201d she interjects: \u201cOh my God, that Amanda \u2014 I can\u2019t. No, no, no, no, no.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know,\u201d she considers for a brief moment before continuing, \u201cI\u2019m gonna say it and he\u2019s probably not going to be happy, but I\u2019m texting with Jason. Captain Jason [of \u201cBelow Deck Down Under\u201d], of course. We\u2019re just friends.\u201d <\/p>\n

She says after work wrapped on the book \u2014 a 2\u00bd-year process \u2014 she slept. But the challenging days returned when it was time to record the audio version.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the most hurtful thing \u2014 I don\u2019t even know if that\u2019s the word,\u201d she says. \u201cSitting down and just reading it out loud and reliving it. It\u2019s a really hard experience. Look, people are going to be like, \u2018Oh, you f\u2014 celebrity.\u2019 No. Reading your s\u2014 again. I did not like that. I wanted it to go away so quickly. So, I read it really fast. They kept saying, \u2018Can you not read it so fast?\u2019 And I\u2019d be like, \u2018I need to go back to bed because I\u2019m pissed off at this person and I\u2019m pissed off at this person. That\u2019s how it felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

It eventually leads to reflection on the idea of \u201chappiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Christina Applegate with her daughter, Sadie, as featured in her memoir, \u201cYou With the Sad Eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Little, Brown & Co.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone asked me if I\u2019ve ever been happy, I would say \u2018no,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. And I know that\u2019s a big statement to have. There\u2019s a part of the book that I talk about being in Big Sur and going, \u2018I feel happy.\u2019 I don\u2019t think I felt that way again \u2014 but that\u2019s a big thing we all have to talk about. Let\u2019s talk about that f\u2014 feeling. \u2018What is happy?\u2019 And, no, I have not been happy since that moment, except for the birth of my child, and every time she kisses me on my forehead and my nose and my cheeks or she hugs me and she says, \u2018I love you, mama\u2019 and she goes, \u2018Let\u2019s go listen to the Cure,\u2019 \u2018Let\u2019s go dance,\u2019 \u2018Let\u2019s go be weird.\u2019 Those are my happy moments. She is my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she allowed her daughter to read through some of her old journals. But Sadie hasn\u2019t read the book \u2014 though Applegate has signed a copy for her \u2014 \u201cShe\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, mom, thank you so much.\u2019 And then she threw it across the room; not in an effigy, just in a … she\u2019s dealing with school.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWithout outing my child, because I don\u2019t want to speak for all her feelings because that\u2019s not fair,\u201d she says, \u201cShe\u2019s lost her mom. I\u2019m not dead. But I\u2019m not the person that I was five years ago when I was dancing with her and hiking with her and playing tennis with her and doing things. She\u2019s lost her mom. And it\u2019s f\u2014 hard on her, man. And it\u2019s hard for her to talk about it as well. That\u2019s as far as I\u2019m going to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With our 37-minute session coming to an end, she perks up, thinking she hears her daughter, 15, arriving home from school. False alarm. I say I thought one of her body parts, which she has given unique nicknames like Meghan Markle (right leg) and Tootie from \u201cThe Facts of Life\u201d (left leg) to scold when they\u2019re acting up, was giving her a hard time. <\/p>\n

\u201cMeghan has been so sweet to Tootie because Tootie is an a\u2014 today,\u201d she assures me. \u201cI can\u2019t even walk into the bathroom with Tootie. But Meghan, I\u2019m like, \u2018Girl, you got this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the Shelf You With the Sad Eyes By Christina ApplegateLittle Brown: 304 pages, $32 If you buy…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":629706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[268672,567,5997,268671,67153,13978,185,50156,2385,171,13940,2252,17241,31290,29013,6620,3302,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-629705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-absent-father","tag-abuse","tag-age","tag-applegate","tag-autoimmune-disease","tag-book","tag-celebrities","tag-christina-applegate","tag-day","tag-entertainment","tag-last-year","tag-life","tag-mother","tag-ms","tag-stuff","tag-time","tag-trauma","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116166490513278610","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}