The Hollywood star Christina Applegate was just 16 years-old when she rose to fame playing Kelly Bundy on the hit sitcom Married…With Children. She quickly became a sex symbol thanks to her looks and the flirty-airhead personality she displayed on the series.
In a new interview, however, Applegate is revealing the devastating impact that her sex symbol status had on her life at such a young age.
Applegate Sounds Off
“Playing that character kind of did things to me in my psyche that were no bueno – like anorexia,” Applegate, 53, said on her MeSsy podcast as she spoke with her Married…With Children co-star Katey Segal. “Yeah, a pretty bad eating disorder started when I was doing that show that lasted for a really long time.”
Applegate went on to say that she didn’t tell anyone about her eating disorder at the time because she was “very, very private about it.”
“I would hide in bathrooms to eat, because I had so much shame around eating that I would hide on the airplanes, like when we went to London,” she recalled. “I remember hiding in there to eat like one shrimp, ’cause I was so afraid if anyone saw me eat that they’d think I was going to try to get fat or something….I don’t know, I was in such a dark space.”
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Sagal Weighs In
Sagal, who played Applegate’s mother on Married…With Children, admitted that she “didn’t know all that.”
“Yeah, I kept everything close to the chest,” Applegate explained. “There’s a lot of stuff that happened in the wings of my life that you guys didn’t know about.”
Sagal chimed back in to say that Applegate was “very much scrutinized” on the show because she was the “sex symbol.” She then said that this could mess with anyone’s head, and that Married…With Children “was a very misogynistic show.”
Sagal stated that she was alright with making the “misogynistic” jokes at the time because she felt that they were her character’s opinions, rather than her own.
“So, I was able to keep that separation, but Chrissy was very much scrutinized and tried to keep in a box,” Sagal continued. “So they put her in tighter skirts and shorter skirts, so, there was a lot of that.”
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Applegate Actually Suggested The Sexy Outfits
Applegate, however, confessed that her character’s skimpy outfits were actually her own idea. The character of Kelly was originally written as a “tough biker girl.” Applegate decided to change this up after being inspired by a girl that she saw being interviewed in the 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization: Part II: The Metal Years. The young woman in the documentary said that she wanted to pursue her “modeling and her actressing.”
“And she had this big hair, and a white Lycra dress, and I went to the wardrobe department and I said, ‘We’re changing this, We gotta represent the zeitgeist of this rock, slutty video vixen thing that’s going on in the world right now where the men and the women all look the same. You know? They have the same hairdos,'” Applegate remembered. “So, that’s where she came from.”
It didn’t take long for Applegate to regret this, however. Indeed, she soon realized that she’d shot herself “in the foot,” as the sexier outfits only put more pressure on her to stay thin.
Sadly, Applegate is currently battling multiple sclerosis. Please join us in saying a prayer for her!
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