'Married … with Children’ star Christina Applegate admits pressures of being sex symbol led to eating disorder

Christina Applegate said this week that the pressures of being portrayed as beautiful and sexy on "Married … with Children" led to her developing an eating disorder.

"Playing that character kind of did things to me in my psyche that were no bueno – like anorexia," the 53-year-old explained on her "MeSsy" podcast while speaking to guest and former "Married … with Children" co-star Katey Sagal.

"Yeah, a pretty bad eating disorder started when I was doing that show that lasted for a really long time," she said. 

Applegate said that she never told anyone about the disorder at the time and was "very, very private about it."

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"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 said. "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."

Sagal, who played Applegate’s onscreen mother on the show, which ran from 1987 until 1997, told her that she "didn’t know all that."

Applegate answered, "Yeah, I kept everything close to the chest. There’s a lot of stuff that happened in the wings of my life that you guys didn’t know about." 

Sagal agreed that Applegate was "very much scrutinized" on the show because she was the "sex symbol."

Being a sex symbol at 17 would "f--- with" anyone's head, Sagal said, adding that "it was a very misogynistic show."

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But she always felt OK making "misogynistic" jokes on the show, because she never felt it was her opinion, Sagal continued, explaining that she was just playing her character, Peggy Bundy.

"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."

Applegate admitted that the provocative wardrobe choices were actually her idea. 

Her character, Kelly Bundy, was originally written as a "tough" "biker girl," but she said she was inspired by a girl interviewed for the 1981 documentary, "The Decline of Western Civilization: Part II: The Metal Years," who told interviewers she wanted to continue her "modeling and her actressing." 

"And she had this big f------ 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.' So, that’s where she came from."

But she quickly realized she may have "shot myself in the foot" by suggesting a sexier version of the character, who would have to stay skinny. 

In a 2023 interview with Vanity Fair, Applegate discussed how much people were focused on her looks rather than her talent on the sitcom. 

"I was never on the receiving end of any kind of lasciviousness from anyone before ['Married … with Children'], because I was wearing bells around my ankles and moccasins and wearing patchouli," she told the magazine. "I was a gross little hippie kid. Looking back on it in hindsight, it’s pretty gross. Yeah, that part of it kind of sucked. Men had posters of this little 17-year-old, with me holding pearls. Like, who let me do that? I didn’t even know what the connotation was." 

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She first opened up about her anorexia on her podcast last May. 

"I just deprived myself of food for years and years and years. It was f---ing torture," she said. "I wanted my bones to be sticking out, so I didn't eat." 

And while she never talked about it at the time, she said that people on the set noticed. 

"It was very scary to everyone on set because they were like, 'Christina never eats.' And I didn't," she admitted. "They talked to me about it."

The costume department was altering her outfits to be smaller than size zero, according to Applegate. "But to me, I was enormous."

On this week's podcast episode, Sagal talked about how her character was also put in racy outfits, which she admitted was her idea. 

When she first auditioned for the part, Sagal explained that Peggy was written as "slovenly," but she decided she didn't want to portray her that way, so she "came to the audition sort of dolled up, you know, like I wore a tight dress, and I wore little like cat eye glasses, and I had my hair up." The producers liked the sexy look, and "then you’re stuck in those clothes." 

The pair also agreed that over the years the writers "dumbed down" both of their characters. "We didn’t start stupid," Sagal said. 

"Kelly couldn’t open a door once," Applegate laughed. "I was like ‘Are we really going here? This is what’s happened now?’ Like, she can’t open a door? For 10 years, she was opening many doors to hoots and hollers from the audience, and then she was like, ‘Ugh,’" she said, making a caveperson noise.  

Elsewhere on the podcast, Sagal remembered Applegate as a teenager on the show, saying she’d wished she could just have a normal job after growing up as a child actress, which Sagal found hard to relate to, because she had struggled so hard to become an actress.

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"I just wanted to be normal, man," Applegate said, adding that she had had no typical high school experiences. 

"I was at school with Dave," she said, referring to her on-screen younger brother, David Faustino. 

Touching on the troubles of child stars, Sagal said, "Christina is one of the few that’s made it through."

"I mean, I think it’s really tough, that child-star road is like, man. And Christina has, you just made the transition seamlessly, which is not the experience of a lot of people," she said. 

Applegate credited Sagal and Ed O’Neill, who played her onscreen dad, in helping her with that transition. 

Calling the sitcom the "black sheep" of television at the time, the women agreed that none of the cast were treated "special" by any executives or anyone else. 

"There was no place for all that other bulls--- to get in the way, like the ego and thinking you’re better than everyone else, and I think that’s what happens to these young kids, that they get treated better," Applegate mused. 

She remembered being on set once with a very high fever, asking one of the stage managers if they could get her an orange juice, and the stage manager said, "You have legs."

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"And I’ll never forget that as long as I live," she said, "and I was like ‘Oh yeah, you can do it for yourself."