Christina Applegate unleashes a raw, probing memoir: 'You with the Sad Eyes'

NEW YORK (AP) — Christina Applegate's memoir is not a safe, prim thing. It's raw and angry, lyrical and funny, and more than a bit dangerous — a lot like Christina Applegate.

“My words come out of my face hole the way they come out of my face hole and that’s just the way it goes,” she tells The Associated Press. “I can feel them coming out of my brain and I have stopped editing them.”

“You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir,” out Tuesday, charts the personal and career ups and downs of a veteran Hollywood comic actor with a rawness rarely found in today's memoirs.

She writes of being abandoned by her father and growing up in an abusive household, of being the victim of domestic violence as an adult, motherhood, of surviving cancer and now living with multiple sclerosis.

“I hate the word cathartic because it really wasn’t,” she says of writing her story. “I just puked it out, adding, “It was like taking Milk of Magnesia for the soul.”

Three big roles

Applegate won an Emmy Award playing Rachel’s narcissistic sister on “Friends,” earned a Tony Award nomination for “Sweet Charity” on Broadway and received four Golden Globe nods. She was named “The Most Beautiful Person in the World” by People magazine in 2009.

But she writes that she has had a lifelong struggle with body image and weight. “I had no idea I was attractive to anyone,” she writes. “Truthfully, I have never known how to deal with the fact that I’m a successful person and yet I hate myself.”

Applegate made a memorable show business debut, appearing in a 1972 episode of “Days of Our Lives” at just three months old and already showing some range — she played a baby boy.

The book charts her three big roles — the dim teenager Kelly Bundy on the unabashedly raunchy “Married... with Children,” the confused career woman she played on “Samantha Who?” and her favorite part in the Netflix dark tragicomedy series “Dead to Me.”

There were also terrifying years, like the ones in which her stepfather was an abusive alcoholic and junkie who pulled her mother into addiction and poverty. She writes of once being elated simply to have hamburger buns with dinner.

“In looking back across my life, I have realized that when good things happen to me, as many good things have, they are invariably stalked by darkness, dampened by subsequent tragedies and trauma.”

‘Leaning into that darkness’

Bryn Clark, her editor at Little, Brown and Company, was impressed by Applegate's willingness to offer her unvarnished truth at a time when her peers are usually positioning their brands favorably or making things look rosy.

“We do not see this often — a high profile author really leaning into that darkness and murk and doing it in a way that is not easy,” she says. “She just rolled up her sleeves like she’s done with everything in her life.”

There are great stories about how Applegate made Will Ferrell and Adam McKay crack up with a filthy insult during her audition for “Anchorman” and how she danced in one of musical theater’s most demanding parts on a broken foot when she starred in “Sweet Charity” on Broadway.

Applegate looks back with cringe at her first wedding ceremony — it was vegan and dry and she became a bridezilla. (“I’m so sorry, everyone,” she writes.) There are other laughable decisions, like the time she took Brad Pitt as a date to the MTV Video Music Awards — but went home with someone else.

Applegate began the process of crafting her memoir three years ago, consulting her diaries and then talking into a recorder for what she estimates was about 100 hours. Once put on paper, she and Clark began to shape it.

“Telling our truth in a way that is vulnerable and honest and uncomfortable is what helps other people feel that they can share theirs, too,” says Clark. “I think that’s her greatest dream with this book.”

Being more honest

One of Applegate's regrets is not being more honest about the sadness and pain she felt after undergoing a double mastectomy. She recalls being interviewed on TV and adopting the persona of Little Ms. Warrior, counting her blessings.

“I was disgusted by myself because I was doing a disservice to people that were sick,” she says in the interview. “We’ve got to just be honest. Look, we don’t have to be maudlin about everything, right? But there are people sitting there going, ‘I hate this.’ And I’m going to say I hate it too, kids.”

After going public with her MS diagnosis in 2021, Applegate has changed her approach, becoming very open about how difficult it’s been living with the chronic disease.

It has made her use diapers and scootch down stairs on her butt. “My life has in some ways shrunk to the size of my California king,” she writes. She created the MeSsy podcast with Jamie-Lynn Sigler to talk about living with the disorder and advising others.

She keeps a hard copy of “You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir” on her nightstand these days, proud of its unvarnished truth but nervous nonetheless.

“It scares me. I have it next to my bed because I keep trying to go, ’Why did you say that, dude? Why did you do that, dude? Come on, man,” she says. “But there it is.”