A uncommon look by the actor Christina Applegate, who was recognized with a number of sclerosis in 2021, introduced coronary heart and humor to the ceremony’s celebration of TV historical past.
One of many first presenters of Monday’s seventy fifth Emmy Awards responded to a standing ovation by gently mocking the viewers. As the gang cheered, the actor Christina Applegate added some wry humor to her expression of gratitude. “Thanks a lot. Oh my god, you’re completely shaming me with incapacity by standing up,” she stated. Applegate, who has a number of sclerosis and walked onto the stage with a cane, continued: “It’s high quality. Physique not by Ozempic. Okay, let’s go!”
However the viewers continued to clap. So the teary-eyed Applegate, who was onstage to current the award for Excellent Supporting Actress in a Comedy Collection, added one other joking admonition: “We don’t should applaud each time I do one thing.”
Applegate’s coronary heart and humor have been a welcome sight. Within the years since being recognized with MS in 2021, proper as she was filming the third and last season of the Netflix collection Useless to Me, she’s stayed largely out of the general public eye (apart from a number of appearances tied to the season’s launch in late 2022). And Applegate had beforehand advised that final yr’s Display Actors Guild Awards could be the final ceremony she attends as an actor. (She arrived on the present sporting a cane with the letters “FU MS” on it.) On the Emmys, the place her presence was a shock to many, Applegate acknowledged the bodily and emotional realities of an autoimmune dysfunction in a room of individuals whose careers generally depend upon their talents to downplay the frailty of their our bodies.
Even earlier than her Emmys look, Applegate has been candid concerning the toll that MS has taken on her physique, her psychological well being, and her capability to do the factor she loves: carry out. The MS analysis isn’t her first public well being battle: In 2008, Applegate was recognized with breast most cancers whereas starring on Samantha Who?, the ABC comedy collection for which she earned two of her eight Emmy nominations. She survived after a double mastectomy at 36. Reflecting on that have later, the actor stated the MS analysis made her rethink pushing herself so exhausting to work whereas recovering. “I ought to have requested for some extra time after one among my surgical procedures,” she instructed Self-importance Truthful in 2023. “I went again to work two weeks after my reconstruction. And that was actually tough for me to do.”
Useless to Me, during which Applegate performed a hot-tempered widow trying to find solutions in her husband’s hit-and-run demise, earned her a nomination on this yr’s Excellent Lead Actress in a Comedy Collection class. (She misplaced to Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson.) In some ways, the dramedy was the right automobile for Applegate’s abilities: a blisteringly humorous, looking out exploration of an unlikely bond between tough ladies. However manufacturing on the collection was extremely taxing for her, even after filming was shut down for a number of months whereas she sought remedy. Some days, she wanted a wheelchair on set; some days, she wasn’t capable of make it in any respect. Thought of alongside these challenges, and the misery she put her physique by means of in earlier many years, Applegate’s joke concerning the viewers applauding each one among her achievements took on much more which means.
And through an evening that noticed the Emmys repeatedly gesture on the previous by reuniting the casts of reveals like Cheers, Martin, and Ally McBeal, it was becoming to open the ceremony with a performer whose first tv look got here as a child: Earlier than she was Sue Ellen Crandell in Don’t Inform Mother the Babysitter’s Useless or Kelly Bundy on Married… with Youngsters, Applegate made her onscreen debut as a literal toddler, a undeniable fact that fellow actor Jason Bateman referenced later within the Emmys ceremony. “My first performing position was on Little Home on the Prairie,” he stated. “I used to be 11—in comparison with Christina Applegate, I used to be a late bloomer.”
Tv—if not the leisure trade as a complete—can typically appear as if it requires actors, and particularly ladies, to disclaim the fundamental truths of getting older. This yr’s ceremony celebrated TV historical past by reminding viewers that a few of it’s historical past. Over her 5 many years working in TV, Applegate witnessed and contributed to a whole lot of that historical past—and the fantastic thing about her look was the actor’s willingness to handle a number of the sacrifices made alongside the best way.
