Christina Applegate is usually not one for social media.
But the actress known for her turns on shows such as Dead to Me and Married… With Children has joined Instagram. Her first post, made Thursday, showed her, in a black-and-white image, looking directly into the camera.
She captioned it, “Hi everyone, Christina here. If you told me a year ago that I’d be on Instagram, I would have said, F— off! But here I am, so I’m going to do it my way. Real, raw, honest.”
Applegate, who won an Emmy in 2003 for a guest role as the sister of Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel on Friends, described the snapshot as “my favorite picture of myself lately.”
She apologized for “the half tuck of the shirt,” and noted that it had been taken by a longtime friend “in my backyard with the chimes that remind me of my mother and a moon necklace from a dear witchy friend.”
In 2021, Applegate revealed that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune condition that affects the brain and spinal cord.
Since then, the actress, 53, has been candid about how she’s been affected, on the podcast MeSsy, which she cohosts with actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who was diagnosed with MS while she was still on The Sopranos.
As Sigler told PEOPLE when the podcast debuted in March 2024, she “wanted to give her tools and things that I’ve learned that have helped me.”
The women had met through their mutual friend Lance Bass.
Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler cohost the ‘MeSsy’ podcast.
Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images; Scott Gries/BRAVO via Getty Images
“We would talk on the phone for two hours,” Applegate said, “and we’d be laughing and crying, and we were like, ‘This is helping us. Let’s record this. Let’s do it.'”
Applegate’s words on her podcast would certainly be described as “real, raw, honest,” as she’s explained the brutal symptoms that she’s dealt with.
In a March episode, she made a shocking admission, while answering a question from a listener.
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“Three years since I was diagnosed, I’ve been in the hospital upwards of 30 times from throwing up and diarrhea and pain,” Applegate said, noting that a doctor told her it was not attributable to her MS. “That is unimaginable, OK? They’ve done every test known to man on me, put so much radiation into my body from CT scans to everything else. And literally just in the last month, I have figured it out.”
She’s also described the brutal pain she struggles with daily.
“I lay in bed screaming,” Applegate said on a November episode of MeSsy. “Jamie and I have different — everybody has different ways of it showing up. I lay in bed screaming. Like, the sharp pains, the ache, that squeezing.”
New episodes of MeSsy debut Tuesdays.