Christina Applegate & Jamie-Lynn Sigler Get Brutally Honest About MS: 'Excruciating Pain ... It Sucks'

The Dead to Me star, 52, was first diagnosed with the disease back in 2021 -- but believes she's been living with it years longer -- while Sigler was diagnosed when she was 20, back in 2001 while she was starring on The Sopranos. The pair have bonded over their shared health condition and are launching a podcast together, MeSsy, next week.

The stars got real about their condition in a pair of interviews this week, one for Good Morning America and another for PEOPLE magazine.

Appearing alongside one another on GMA, Applegate said that while she can feel the love and support from fans, she also lives in a "kind of hell" thanks to MS.

Getting emotional, the Married... with Children alum said she first started feeling symptoms like toe tingling in early 2021 -- but by the summer, she needed to use a wheelchair to get to set, meaning it was time to tell others what she was experiencing.

"I needed someone to help me get there and they were wonderful," she said, choking up. "But I probably had it for many, many years, probably six or seven years."

"I noticed, the first season, we'd be shooting and I would buckle, my leg would buckle," she continued. "I put it off as being tired, or dehydrated, or it's the weather, and then nothing would happen for months and I didn't pay attention. But when it hit this hard, I had to pay attention."

She explained it was her Sweetest Thing costar Selma Blair -- who also has MS -- who urged her to get tested for the disease.

"She goes, 'You need to be checked for MS.' I said, 'No, really? The odds, the two of us from the same movie, that doesn't happen,'" Applegate recalled. "She knew. If not for her, it could have been way worse."

Sigler has also become a close confidant and someone Applegate said "keeps me going."

"I'm flipping the bird all day long at this thing and I'm angry. I'm really, really pissed," Applegate shared. "I was a dancer and a runner and all these things that I love and a mom and she's like, 'Okay, I have you and you are going to be okay.' If not for her, I really honestly don't know."

"It sucks. It sucks," she continued. "It's not my favorite disease, I've had a couple. It's not my favorite one."

Applegate also called the disease very "isolating" and something she's reminded of every day when she wakes up.

"That's how I'm dealing with it, by not going anywhere because I don't want to do it, it's hard," she explained. "They call it the invisible disease, but it can be very lonely. It's hard to explain to people. I'm in excruciating pain, I'm just used to it now."

Speaking with PEOPLE, Applegate said she was dreading the photoshoot for the publication, with just the thought of people touching up her hair and makeup having her "throwing up" the night beforehand.

Opening up about her daily symptoms, she said they're worse in the morning, "like crazy-town bad."

"The pain and the numbness and the balance. It's horrible. So of course first thing in the morning, I'm real pissed off about it all. But I don't want to be like this always," she said, again getting choked up as she said Jamie-Lynn's support has let her know she has to "live a long enough life to experience my kid and the things she's going to do."

"I need to be here, so I've got to fight," she said, before sharing how the diagnosis has also affected how she's able to parent daughter Sadie, 13.

"My daughter's had to see the loss of her mom, in the way that I was a mom with her: dancing with her every day, picking her up from school every day, working at her school, working in the library. Being present, out of the house, out of my bed, she doesn't see those things anymore," Applegate explained. "If she comes in my room and sees I'm laying on my side, she knows she can't ask me to do anything. And that breaks me."

"When you have to say, 'I can't,' it rips your soul apart," a crying Applegate added. "I'm sorry. I freak out about it every day."

Getting even more honest about the realities of the disease, Applegate said doctors are "pretty sure my stomach and intestines are not very good friends," which causes her "intense pain and vomiting." She added that she recently lost 30 pounds after putting on 45 following her diagnosis -- quipping, "People are like, 'What have you been doing?' And I'm like, 'Vomiting.' Not Ozempic. Barfing."

She also said the disease causes her to "pee ... in your pants," because "you probably can't get to the bathroom in time" -- meaning she wears diapers.

The two did also joke about the upsides to their diagnosis as well, with Applegate saying, "First of all, parking is awesome."

"There could be a cure for MS, and I will not give up my handicap placard. We earned it!" exclaimed Sigler.

Applegate also praised wheelchair seating, pre-board for planes and getting wheeled around airports. "But I put my hat down, I'm embarrassed," said Sigler -- as Christina added, "I wear a mask. I don't let people see."

Watch the full GMA interview above and see more from their PEOPLE interview here.