INTERVIEW R. KURT OSENLUND
Christina Applegate Right On Top
The comedic actress who built her fanbase with shows like Married... With Children and movies like Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead has come a long way, and now she’s doing some of the finest work in the biz on the Netflix series Dead to Me.
22
ICON | JUNE 2019 | ICONDV.COM | FACEBOOK.COM/ICONDV
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE GIVES THE performance of her life in Dead to Me, a twisty, dark, uncompromising dramedy that’s been the toast of Netflix since its series premiere last month. Set in Southern California, the show casts Applegate as Jen, a real estate agent and mother of two who grapples with anger issues long before her husband, Ted, is killed in a hit and run. The accident, and Jen’s subsequent grief, sit at the core of the story, and they lead the cynical antiheroine to a support group where she meets Judy (Linda Cardellini), another woman who’s suffered loss but is carrying a hefty vault of secrets. Despite Jen’s general aversion to other humans (especially the local cops who have zero leads on Ted’s death), she embraces Judy as both gal pal and kindred spirit. Both actresses bring flawless work to a brilliantly complex friendship dynamic, but Applegate seems to have cut herself open for her role, exposing every feeling and fear in her body to capture Jen’s rollercoaster ride of emotions. “There were some other actresses up for the part,” Applegate says from her home in Los Angeles, where she frequently reacts to her dog, who’s bounding around the house. “But [series creator] Liz Feldman fought for me, believed in me, and wanted me for the role. She asked me if I was ready to go to some really intense and dark places. And I said, ‘Yeah. Let’s do it.’” In every way, Jen seems like the role that Applegate’s life has been prepping her for, both personally and professionally. From Married...with Children and Samantha Who? to a wide array of Hollywood movies, the actress has always been a comedic powerhouse, often mixing deadpan banter with game theatrics. In Dead to Me, the humor is about as dry as it gets, with many of the laughs coming courtesy of Jen and her grief-fueled, fuck-this-shit vocabulary of obscenities. The character is always sympathetic (given what she’s lost and the shrewd sensitivity of the show’s writers), but no one in Dead to Me is immune to Jen’s sharp tongue. “It’s very much my own sense of humor,” Applegate says, even if she’s not likely to go cursing out officers at a police station. “Jen and I are both really snarky. Most of the material was already on the page, but some of it poured out of me, too. I think the scene where I scream ‘twat’ was definitely not in the script.” Feldman seems to have also lovingly shaped Jen’s journey and backstory around Applegate’s own. There are the subtle touches, such as when Jen takes a dance class, which harkens back to the actress’s own dance background (among other things, she was a founding member of The Pussycat Dolls, before the all-girl burlesque act was transformed into a pop group). And then there are the emotional wallops, like Jen’s revelation of a battle with breast cancer that resulted in a double mastectomy. In 2008, Applegate’s real-life breast cancer diagnosis was heavily covered by the media, as was her double mastectomy that ultimately left her cancer free. And like Jen, Applegate is a mother, raising her 8-year-old daughter, Sadie Grace, with her husband, musician Martyn LeNoble. None of these parallels feel like pandering back-pats or bone-tosses to the show’s leading lady, because every one of them feels thoroughly natural and true to Jen’s path. To be fully formed, Dead to Me needed a star who’s lived, who’s lost, who’s seen a few things, who’s gotten back up, and who can laugh and cry about it—a lot. “Yeah, I’ve had quite a life,” says Applegate, who’s 47, and embraces the natural beauty of that age in the show—the makeup is never heavy, and a small scar between the eyebrows adds character to both Jen and Applegate. “I’ve experienced loss and grief, and a lot of grief that no one even knows about.” Whatever that is or was, Applegate channels it into all manner of scenes in Dead to Me, from a public berating of Judy that blows up as their friendship evolves, to a traumatic, post-sexual assault breakdown that occurs while Jen’s hunting down her husband’s killer. The lack of emotional limits in Applegate’s work is as shocking as the show’s surprises,
>
28
