Christina Applegate got candid about her singular experience with plastic surgery on the Tuesday, July 30 episode of her podcast, MeSsy, which she cohosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler. The Dead to Me actress, 52, revealed she got her under-eye bags surgically removed, but was heavily influenced by a producer’s comment about her appearance.
“At 27 years old, I was on a show and one of the producers, very famous people who did a very famous show as well, said, ‘Hey, we’re having trouble lighting under your eyes. Your bags under your eyes are so big,'” Applegate revealed, noting with a quick aside that it’s a “hereditary thing.” He recommended she “get them removed.”
“And you know what? I did,” she continued. “At 27 years old, I had the only plastic surgery I ever had—to remove the bags under my eyes.” The actress added that she thinks she listened to that suggestion as a result of people planting seeds into her head, which caused her to feel “shame.”
On another more recent occasion, Applegate almost got a thread lift, a treatment previously described to NewBeauty as “the only minimally invasive procedure that can actually mimic open surgery results in terms of actually mechanically lifting the sagging facial skin.” But she was shut down by the physician, who said, “I can’t because your face is too fat.” She recalled, “So [I] couldn’t get that done. That one hurt, too, but I also respect the doctor who’s like, ‘I’m not taking your money if it’s not going to work.’”
“I don’t know if this is a misnomer, but a lot of doctors won’t do surgery on you if you have MS because they’re afraid of complications…because of our MS.” She went on to say she talked to her neurologist about whether that’s something to actually be concerned about, and she told Applegate she’d be “fine.”
Even so, she remains concerned that could be a reality and stays “stuck in that mindset.”
“It’s like, what you see is what you get now, man,” she continued. “I mean, I don’t know what else to do. My brain just goes like, ‘Well, should I just do that?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m just in my house all the time…’”
Listen to the full episode
Applegate has spoken candidly about her MS journey since announcing her diagnosis in August of 2021. At first, she asked for privacy while she navigated it, especially after previously undergoing a double mastectomy for breast cancer in 2008 and having her ovarian and fallopian tubes removed to reduce her cancer risks in 2021.
“Hi friends. A few months ago I was diagnosed with MS,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, at the time. “It’s been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition. It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going. Unless some a—hole blocks it. As one of my friends that has MS said ‘We wake up and take the indicated action’. And that’s what I do. So now I ask for privacy. As I go through this thing.”
