Opinionated people on the internet can feel empowered when hiding behind their screens and keyboards. Public figures know this all too well and have to develop a thick skin. Every once in a while curiosity can lead you to read the comments. This was the case for actor Christina Applegate after attending the Critics' Choice Awards with her daughter, Sadie.
Christina read the comments on a magazine article covering the event and decided to interact with this fan, who accused her of getting plastic surgery. Christina took the high road and told the fan they were not nice.
Christina shared her experience on Twitter. “Sooooo I made the unfortunate decision to look at some comments on an article from people mag about me and my kids at the CCA,” she began her tweet.
Christina accompanied her tweet with a screenshot of the interaction she had with this mean internet troll. The troll said, “MS didn’t make you look that way a plastic surgeon did. And you are a scammer, not Christina Applegate.” The troll later added, “And a bad plastic surgeon at that.”
Christina for her part was a class act and did not get down in the mud with this person. “Of course I told her that it wasn’t nice,” she wrote.
Christina wanted her followers to know this did not get her down. “What is wrong with people. By the way, I laughed,” she concluded.
This mean internet troll’s comments seem especially cruel since Christina was very open about being anxious about attending the award ceremony given her recent multiple sclerosis diagnosis. On January 12, 2023, she tweeted, “So this Sunday will be the first awards show I have been to since 2019. And the first since MS. NERVOUS! But grateful to the @CriticsChoice for including me.”
Thankfully, there were a lot of supportive comments as well to drown out the naysayers. “Never read the comments,” advised Molly Jong-Fast.
“My darling. You are beautiful inside and out. I love you from the bottom to the top of my heart, but you know that. Sadly, because of social media we get to see hateful messages from damaged individuals. Hurt people, hurt people. You are loved the world over, never forget that,” wrote Sean Maguire.
Christina received her MS diagnosis while filming the third and final season of her hit Netflix show Dead to Me in August 2021. Production halted for five months so Christina could receive treatment. Christina admitted that returning to finish was "as hard as you would possibly think it would be."
"I'm so new in this right now. It takes time to kind of figure out this disease, and figure out what's bringing on symptoms. I'm just a newbie to all of this. So I'm trying to figure it out — and I'm also in mourning for the person who I was,” she told People magazine.
For now she is focusing on her new normal and her family, specifically her daughter, Sadie. "I love being here for her 100% all the time — to take her to school, to pick her up from school, to be here for her homework, to make her dinner, to be here when she needs me. That's kind of what I missed out on for a while. And she's very happy to have me here,” she said.
