Christina Applegate claims some at ABC were ‘not sympathetic human beings’ after her cancer treatment

Christina Applegate, the star of Dead to Me and Samantha Who?, has claimed that some people at ABC were “not very sympathetic” to her after she had treatment for breast cancer.

The actor, who said she is much better at setting “boundaries” at work following her MS diagnosis in 2021, reflected on how, years ago, she had responded to having breast cancer quite differently, while working on the sitcom Samantha Who?, which began on ABC in 2007.

“I should have asked for some more time after one of my surgeries,” she told Vanity Fair. “I went back to work two weeks after my reconstruction. And that was really difficult for me to do.”

Applegate said part of her decision to return when she did was to do with the people she was working for who “were not very sympathetic or empathetic human beings”. Applegate clarified this was not the showrunners, but “the people at the network”.

“I didn’t feel like I could have that voice to be like, ‘You know what, it’s only been two weeks, and I’m in a lot of pain and maybe we should just let me have a second,’” she added.

The Independent has contacted ABC for comment.

In the same interview, Applegate discussed calling out Candace Owens on Twitter over a criticism she made about a Skims ad featuring a woman in a wheelchair. “I’m just getting tired of this all-inclusivity thing,” she had said.

“I had to say it because it’s crap,” Applegate said. “I know how hard I tried to get my bra on today and I was stuck. And thank God Skims, the beautiful company that has adaptive clothing for people, sent me the one that you can just put on like a vest and it has things in the front for you to clip.

“With the underwear, you can just pull it up one leg and clip it on the other. We sometimes sit on the toilet for an hour because we can’t get our pants on. It was sad that that person – whose name I don’t speak – took so much space in my f***ing energy field.”