Christina Applegate's 13-Year-Old Daughter Admits It's 'Hard' to See Her Mom Living with MS: 'I Want to Help'

Christina Applegate’s daughter Sadie says that since her mom was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, “it’s definitely hard seeing my mom struggle.”

The 13-year-old, whom Applegate calls the “reason I get up in the morning and my joy of my life” is a guest on the new episode of MeSsy, the podcast hosted by Applegate and close friend, actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who also lives with MS.

The "Dead to Me" actress introduced her teen daughter, whom she shares with husband, musician Martyn Le Noble, as “my favorite guest we could possibly ever have.”

Sadie said coming on the podcast was her idea, and she shared what it’s been like to see MS affect her mom: “When she got diagnosed, it kind of just felt like...not like everything was over but it was hard seeing my mom lose a lot of the abilities she used to have in my childhood, When I was a kid, we would dance in her room for hours at a time.”

Applegate tells Sadie she feels "incredibly guilty" when she has a bad MS day "because I don't ever want you to feel that I'm not capable to be your protector, your mother, you know, I love you," she said. "I want to make you food. I want to bring it to you. I want to do all the things and I do when I can. And I feel incredibly guilty when I can't."

And though Sadie admitted it's been a "difficult" time for their family, she added, “it’s also been nice being able to help her and support her.” But, she joked, her mom doesn't always want the help on offer.

"Every time we go to a concert, she always is like, 'You cannot push my wheelchair, Sadie, you're going to run into a wall,'" she said. "And I will beg. I'm just like, 'Please, mom, let me push your wheelchair.' Because I want to help her, so that's definitely why I want to do it, but it's also funny because she's always saying, 'No, I want this person to do it'... and it's never me."

Applegate defended her case, telling Sadie, "I just always get afraid that...if there was like a ramp that you would just let go because you thought it was funny!" But, she conceded, "You are darn good at pushing the wheelchair."

On the podcast, Sadie shared that when Applegate first was diagnosed "she made us put on socks with sand or like balloons with sand...to help me understand the pain of walking," she said. "It was a very uncomfortable experience."

Sadie's own health issues have also helped her relate. The teen says she suffers from misophonia, which causes intense, overwhelming emotional and physical reactions to certain sounds ("my two worst are breathing and chewing," she says), and she was recently diagnosed with POTS, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. POTS can cause dizziness, fatigue, heart palpitations and headaches.

"When my mom's like, 'I'm in pain right now. I'm having tremors.' If I didn't have [POTS], I probably would be like...I don't know what you're talking about. But I actually have tremors from POTS," Sadie says. "It's definitely a lot easier to understand what she's going through when I have something I'm going through as well."