Christina Applegate On The Dark Side Of Playing Kelly Bundy

Christina Applegatecan attribute much of her career success to her role as Kelly Bundy in “Married… With Children.”

The actress became a household name on television playing the carefree, flirtatious daughter of the dysfunctional Bundy family in the pioneering Fox sitcom.

The role helped launch Applegate’s career and cement her status as a TV star, eventually leading to projects like her Emmy-winning guest appearance on “Friends.”

Despite this success, however, Applegate has opened up about a much darker side to portraying Kelly Bundy. The 54-year-old reflects on the experience in her newly released memoir, “You With the Sad Eyes.”

When “Married… With Children” premiered in 1987, it quickly became one of Fox’s earliest signature hits and helped establish the network’s identity.

Because of that visibility, Kelly Bundy became instantly recognizable to audiences across the U.S.

The sitcom eventually ran for 11 seasons and 259 episodes, making Kelly one of the most familiar characters on television during that period.

Applegate herself came to be widely perceived as a TV sex symbol during the show’s decade-long run.

Katey Sagal, one of the sitcom’s main stars, later described how the producers leaned into that image.

“Chrissy was very much scrutinized and [kept] in a box,” Sagal said during an episode of “PIE with Kurt Sutter and Katey Sagal.” “They put her in tighter and shorter skirts.”

Ahead of the official release of Applegate’s memoir, excerpts from the book were published by Vulture.

The “Dead to Me” star revealed how she often avoided eating as she struggled to keep up with the pressure of portraying Kelly Bundy.

“Sometimes I’d punish myself and wouldn’t eat at all,” Applegate wrote. “I was bone, bone, bone.”

The actress was going to great lengths to live up to the character’s image, but she says she never felt satisfied.

“I worked so hard on my body, but I was never satisfied,” she said. “[I was] always chasing the unobtainable, abusing my body in the service of a quest for perfection that was as damaging as any addiction.”

In a candid passage from the memoir, Applegate also shared a diary entry she wrote at 16.

Incidentally, that was the same age she began appearing on “Married… with Children.”

The heart-wrenching excerpt from her journal offers a glimpse into the mind of a teenager struggling to accept her body.

“I hate to look at myself anymore,” Applegate wrote. “I’m bored with everything about me. My hair, face, body. I want auburn hair right above my breasts. I want a defined face. I want to be beautiful. But now I’m too plain. I’m not ugly, but I’m not anything exciting.”

As “Married… with Children” grew in popularity, Applegate says the physical image associated with Kelly Bundy became increasingly difficult to maintain.

The wardrobe choices that helped define the character’s look included tight dresses, crop tops, and revealing outfits. These selections reinforced pressure on Applegate to remain extremely thin.

Reflecting on that period, she wrote: “I dug myself into a hole with that character, though, because I had to be skinny.”

Applegate recalled restricting her food intake to extreme levels while working on the show.

“If I was going to eat something as horrendously huge as a bagel, say, I would scoop it out and maybe have half of it, or half of a half. That would be my food intake for an entire day.”

Applegate’s career has slowed considerably since 2021, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

The illness, which affects the brain and spinal cord, has made the physical demands of acting far more difficult.

As a result, the actress has been forced to scale back her on-screen career and reconsider what the future might hold for her in Hollywood.

In a 2022 interview with Variety, Applegate described the amount of physical assistance she required while filming.

“If I’m standing in the doorway, usually [someone] would be laying on the floor, holding my legs,” she said. “There was a ballet and a dance that was going on to make sure that I didn’t fall.”