After living with multiple sclerosis for two decades, it was easy for Jamie-Lynn Sigler to step in and offer advice to Christina Applegate after her own diagnosis. However, one key difference in their journeys is that The Soprano family alum hid her battle with MS from the world for 16 years.
In PEOPLE’s exclusive clip from their new podcast, MeSsy—which debuts March 19 and also deals with life’s challenges outside of MS—Applegate admits she can’t believe Sigler kept her diagnosis a secret for so long.
“It’s because I could for a while, until I couldn’t,” says Sigler, who revealed her MS diagnosis in a story for PEOPLE in 2016. “And then it became a long line of lies. ‘I have a back problem.’ ‘I must have broken my ankle.’ I got away with it as long as I could until people said, ‘Are you limping?’ Are you OK?'”
“I dismissed it because I just didn’t know what it would mean for me to say it out loud and for everyone to know,” she continues. “I’ll probably get fired. Who would want me? I had to take a step back and a step forward to kind of really reevaluate my life. I really knew that I still wanted to act and if I was going to keep doing it, I had to set boundaries.”
Applegate, who was diagnosed with MS while filming her Netflix series Dead to meshe says that’s one of the biggest lessons Sigler taught her.
“One thing you told me was, ‘Set your boundaries.’ “If you hadn’t told me that, I wouldn’t have been able to finish the last season of my show and do it because you gave me that power,” she says.
Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
John Russo
Jamie-Lynn Sigler Says Christina Applegate Helped Her Admit MS Is ‘Hard’ And Stop ‘Trying To Be Perfect’ (Exclusive)
In an exclusive interview with the two actresses, Applegate also tells PEOPLE how Sigler encouraged her to set boundaries when she was trying to continue working, admitting she was scared at first.
While playing Jen Harding on the Netflix series, Applegate says it was “not an easy job” because of MS and she had to tell the hosts that she couldn’t stand or walk much in many scenes.
Sigler says she was “amazed” by how much Applegate was able to do while dealing with the severe symptoms of the disease and was glad to be able to help her during her journey.
“What I wanted to give her were tools and things that I learned that helped me. First I told her, ‘You have to set your boundaries. You have to explain what you can and can’t do so that there isn’t another layer of stress.’ And everyone wants to help. Just with an illness like this and having to be an actress on set, you have to explain it to people, and then it can become a pretty seamless operation. But you have to know how to explain what you need and what you don’t need.”
“We try to explain it to people, but honestly, they’ll never understand it,” adds Applegate. “I worked in 104 temperature conditions or I danced on Broadway for a year with a broken leg. They have an ending. One day that foot will no longer hurt, and the temperature will drop. This is forever. And it’s really hard to explain to people why you’re breaking down. You break down because it’s like that finality and that’s it. You don’t get better.”
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Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
John Russo
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Each episode of Sigler and Applegate’s MeSsy podcast takes an unflinching yet humorous look at life with MS — as well as the broader demands of life that actresses face on a daily basis.
“We’d be on the phone for two hours, laughing and crying and saying, ‘This is helping us. Let’s record this. Let’s do that,'” Applegate tells PEOPLE.
Portraying conversations with famous friends and colleagues like Martin Short and Edie Falco, Sigler adds that MeSsy isn’t just “about a specific experience we have. We’re faced with something difficult and it’s about how we push through. We’re sharing the deepest parts yourself.”
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Source: HIS Education