Christina Applegate: Survival of the Funniest | 272

Even the Rich

Wondery

Society & Culture

4.3 • 11.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christina Applegate has always had a dark sense of humor. And she leans on it big time to deal with a series of enormous obstacles and challenges. As a child star-turned-household name (thanks to 11 seasons on “Married...with Children”) Christina avoids the pitfalls of other kid actors and becomes one of Hollywood’s leading ladies of comedy. She’s riding high on the heels of an Emmy-winning turn on “Friends,” and a successful string of movies (“Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” “Vacation”). But when she begins to develop serious and mysterious symptoms on the set of her Netflix show, “Dead to Me,” Christina’s health takes a devastating turn. And her dark sense of humor is put to the test like never before.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can binge the newest season of Even the Rich before anyone else.
0:04.4	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:10.0	Okay, Arisha, do you have like a survival technique for dealing with tough times?
0:21.5	It's just so funny because I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of tough times.
0:27.0	Hard times, yeah.
0:28.2	Same.
0:29.2	My most recent one that I learned is reading Arthur books to myself out loud.
0:34.0	That's how I cope.
0:34.7	Oh.
0:35.2	I regress until like a childhood state of mind and sometimes I just need to be there.
0:39.8	Right. That's fair. Yeah. I feel like our generation craves nostalgia for sure.
0:43.7	Yeah. That and weed. Well, yeah, of course. And drinking and forgetting, you know, all those other normal imbibing things.
0:51.7	Yeah. Well, today's subject has certainly had more than her share of tough times.
0:56.7	And one of the things she's had to lean on to survive devastating heartbreak, disease, and chronic
1:01.4	illness is her dark sense of humor.
1:04.2	That humor has not only allowed her to deal with some seriously horrible times in her
1:08.0	personal life, but has also made her one of the most bankable female comedy stars of her generation. She was once a serious child actor who thought
1:15.9	comedy was beneath her, but she's come to learn that it's actually been the key to her survival.
1:20.7	Today, we're talking about Christina Applegate.
1:41.0	Thank you. It's 1986, and 15-year-old Christina Applegate is a self-described dark weirdo who wants to become a legit, dramatic actress.
1:45.7	So when she has the opportunity to read for a new sitcom called Not the Cosby Show,
1:48.7	Christina flat out refuses to audition for it.
	...

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