Posted in: Fox, TV | Tagged:

Married With Children: Applegate on Initially Passing, Image Issues

Married With Children's Christina Applegate discusses her first passing on the FOX sitcom and how the role led to serious body image issues.

Christina Applegate will always be grateful for her time for her start on Fox's Married… with Children, likely more so because it helped her to superstardom and the TV family she gained, who ended up being lifelong friends, but initially, it was almost not to be since she turned down the initial offer. The Dead to Me star, who's also been battling MS, revealed in her latest memoir, You With the Sad Eyes on the initial issues she had with the Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye-created series as the promiscuous, dumb blonde daughter, Kelly Bundy, appearing in 262 of the 263 episodes across all 11 seasons, with an excerpt on Vulture (via Variety) reflecting on her 11 seasons.

Married with Children Star Christina Applegate on Her Initial Reluctance to Join Fox Sitcom and Life Imitating Art Moments

"To me, and to my mom, it read like a bunch of poorly written potty humor," Applegate explained. "I'd turned down 'Married…,' so the pilot featured another kid in the role of Kelly, but it just didn't work, so they came back to me. The casting director sent me a VHS of the pilot, and my mom and I reluctantly watched it one evening. I'm not sure what we thought we'd see, or why we even watched it in the first place, as I was dead set against it. Boy, how much we wanted to hate it. We sat there like two little snotty actory assholes who'd spent their lives doing Shakespeare. And then, as the show played, we realized we could not stop laughing. I looked at my mom. She looked at me. 'Fuck!' I said. 'It's funny. It's good.'"

It turned out the fame ended up as a double-edged sword as the actress admitted battling body dysmorphia and anorexia before getting cast on 'Married', and it only worsened given her character's nature. "I dug myself into a hole with that character, though, because I had to be skinny," Applegate wrote. "I had a vision of the specific clothes I wanted her to wear, and to wear those clothes — clothes that would show if you ate something as tiny as a single grape — I had to lean even deeper into my eating disorder."

The actress broke down her struggle, "If I were 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. Sometimes I'd punish myself and wouldn't eat at all. I was a size 0, and the costume people on 'Married …With Children' would often have to take my clothes in. I was bone, bone, bone. I worked so hard on my body, but I was never satisfied. There were days when I'd go to a spin class, then work out with my trainer, then go to a dance class for two and a half more hours, always chasing the unobtainable, abusing my body in the service of a quest for perfection that was as damaging as any addiction."

What probably didn't help was how much the series leaned on Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) delivering the bulk of the series' body shaming and misogynistic humor, which often results in the character's comeuppance. If that wasn't blatant enough, the character also literally starts an anti-feminist group called "NO MA'AM," comprising Al's middle-aged peers and neighbors who had shared Al's traditional values and had similar grievances. For more on Applegate's journey through the series, how she doesn't harbor any resentment toward cast and crew during her run, and more, you can check out the entire interview. You With the Sad Eyes is available in bookstores.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!