Christina Applegate, Linda Cardellini and creator Liz Feldman are going to miss “Dead to Me”.
The third and final season of the much-loved show just hit Netflix, with the trio chatting to Variety about its legacy and what they’re going to miss about it in their only joint interview together.
Applegate and Cardellini play best friends Jen Harding and Judy Hale — two grieving women who form a close bond in therapy — in the show.
The latest season means a lot to the cast because at the start of production, back in August 2021, Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Applegate shares, “I’m not going to say that any of it was easy. I started having symptoms in January 2021 — very small, something you could just brush off. Right before we started shooting, it was as if I got hit by a truck and didn’t know what was going on.
“It was very scary for me, because this body that I had known was no longer mine. We had to kind of work around that until, finally, I had answers. I found that I had MS while we were shooting on a Monday. I went home, and the doctor said, ‘I need to do this meeting with you.’ I could feel that this Zoom was not going to be good news. It sucked, I’m not going to lie.”
She continues, “There is no processing the fact that you have a lifelong degenerative disease. Maybe other people could have gone into acceptance. I’m just a year in, so I’m still in that mourning process. But if I didn’t have these two ladies, especially, I don’t know what I would have done.”
When asked to talk about the show’s legacy, Cardellini tells the magazine, “It’s about female friendship — that unconditional love. And the themes that Liz has always talked about: grief, loss, friendship, forgiveness.
“I’ve never had such a partnership, and I will miss the working relationship. I feel like it’s such a gift that I was able to be given these relationships in my workplace. Christina is my best scene partner ever. We were able to improvise, to laugh, to cry through life and through the scripts in a way that I had never experienced before. I’ll miss Jen and Judy.”
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Applegate then says, “My life is so different now, and I miss these two women so much — not the characters, these two. I can honestly say with 100% conviction that I have never, ever worked opposite someone like Linda Cardellini; it was magical.
“I can’t think about whether it was good or not — I’m talking about just sitting there looking into her eyes every day. That was the gift of my life. Hopefully, that was not the gift of my swan song. But if it was, I am so happy that it was with you, my love.”
This isn’t the first time Applegate has mentioned that “Dead to Me” season 3 might be her last project, with her telling Variety that, following her diagnosis, it is “quite possibly the last one I’ll play. With my disease, I don’t know how capable I am.”
