Jamie-Lynn Sigler says, if she could go back, she wouldn't have hidden her MS diagnosis for so long

It’s been 22 years since Jamie-Lynn Sigler learned she had relapsing multiple sclerosis, or RMS. In the years since being diagnosed, the former star of “The Sopranos” has taken on a host of roles. She's an actor, podcast host, mother, wife, friend and advocate.

Her diagnosis has forced Sigler to consider how her MS weighs on these roles. "It has taken some thought and care and really allowed me to find my voice to be quite honest," she told TODAY.com.

Sigler has set boundaries and advocated for herself in ways she might not have if not for her RMS diagnosis. "The adjustments that I make, whether that's on set and asking for a chair to rest in between takes or scenes or parking my trailer a little closer to set," she says make all the difference and she's not shy about asking for it.

For so long Sigler kept quiet about her diagnosis — she revealed it 15 years after the fact — and it "took the joy out of (her) job."

Thankfully, the joy has returned now that she's an advocate, candid about life with RMS. Her latest venture, a podcast, allows her to be just that.

Sigler's new weekly podcast "MeSsy" — which she co-hosts with Christina Applegate, who also has MS — debuted on March 19.

The two actors first connected in 2021, when Applegate was diagnosed with MS. “I wanted to give her tools and things that I’ve learned that have helped me,” Sigler told People about their friendship.

Applegate recalled to the magazine: “We would talk on the phone for two hours, and we’d be laughing and crying, and we were like, ‘This is helping us. Let’s record this. Let’s do it.’”

The podcast promises vulnerable conversations between the co-hosts and their roster of guests, which includes friends, co-stars and “the people (who) keep them going through the messiness of life.”

Now that Sigler is open about her diagnosis, she's advocating for others with MS to lean on each other and reach out for help if and when they need it. Here’s everything to know about Sigler’s MS journey.

What illness does Jamie-Lynn Sigler have?

Sigler has multiple sclerosis, a disease in which the immune system attacks the central nervous system, which includes the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. These attacks damage the protective coverings surrounding the nerve fibers called myelin, which causes the brain to struggle to communicate with the rest of the body, per the Mayo Clinic.

Sigler has relapsing multiple sclerosis, or RMS, which means that at certain times, during flare-ups, her symptoms are especially exacerbated.

Experts aren’t sure what causes MS, nor is there a cure for it. But they do know MS looks different in every person. “Some people with severe MS may lose the ability to walk independently or ambulate at all,” the Mayo Clinic explains. “Other individuals may experience long periods of remission without any new symptoms depending on the type of MS they have.”

Common symptoms include numbness in the limbs, tingling, shock-like sensations in the neck, inability to walk, blurry vision, double vision, loss of vision, vertigo, fatigue, slurred speech and cognitive problems, per the Mayo Clinic.

When was Jamie-Lynn Sigler diagnosed with MS?

Jamie-Lynn Sigler was diagnosed with MS about 22 years ago, when she was 20 years old. However, she wouldn't publicly reveal her diagnosis for 15 years, until 2016.

In 2002, she had just wrapped an episode of “The Sopranos” when she noticed her leg felt heavy. “It was that feeling right before you get pins and needles — that weird tingling, like your legs are asleep,” Sigler told WebMD.

Worried the Lyme disease she was diagnosed with a year prior had returned, her parents took her to the hospital, where she had an MRI and spinal tap. The following day, her doctor said she had MS.

“It was probably the most surreal moment of my life,” Sigler recalled in a 2019 Shondaland essay. “I knew nothing about the disease, to be honest. I fortunately had a doctor who told me right away that as long as I stayed on treatment, there was no reason I couldn’t live a full life.”

She initially felt embarrassed when she received her diagnosis, Sigler revealed on TODAY in 2016, mainly because of her inability to control the condition. “With something like MS, you lose control over things that you once had, and it’s slowly taken away from you, and that can chip away at your self-worth and you can feel less than and (have) a lot of negative feelings,” she said.

Being young affected the way Sigler responded to her diagnosis, too. "To be quite honest, I wish that I took it more seriously," Sigler said. "I think being 20 years old, and being afraid, and not having a lot of help, and people to talk to about it, I wasn't taking the best care of myself."

She says she didn't respect her body the way she does now. "So I wish that I almost treated it as a life-altering moment as opposed to just sort of this diagnosis that I'm going to keep a secret and try not to even think about."

When did Jamie-Lynn Sigler reveal her diagnosis?

Someone in Sigler's life advised her to keep quiet about having MS so she did for years.

But when she finally shared her diagnosis in 2016, she began a journey of "self-reflection and self-acceptance," she told People in November 2023. Before that, she only had close friends and family to lean on, she told TODAY.com. "My own representatives didn't even know at the time," Sigler said.

When she got pregnant with her first son and she was forced to step back from work, and she realized how tired she was. "My main focus of every day when I was at work was how do I get through this day without anybody knowing that I have MS? And you can only imagine how exhausting that was, but also took all the joy out of my job," Sigler said.

"Being able to accept that MS is part of my life but that it doesn't define me, and it doesn't take away my talents or my value as a human being and as an actress took some time to process but I am proud that I've been able to kind of come out on the other side of that," said Sigler.

She still feels sad at times. But she follows a three-step process developed in partnership with Novartis during which she reflects, reframes and reaches out for help. It allows her to "push through those moments."

Looking back, Sigler can't say whether the advice to keep quiet was necessarily bad. "The person that advised me (to keep it a secret) at that time, I think was trying to protect me," Sigler says. But, she says, "I wish I didn't (hide it) for as long as I did without the help that I could have received."

These days, Sigler says, we're having many more conversations about inclusivity, but at the time, "it all felt really scary and daunting."

“It was a big moment for me," she told TODAY about revealing her truth. “I grew up with this idea that people are only going to be attracted to you when you’re perfect, and it’s quite the opposite. MS gave me my superpower, which is vulnerability because the more raw and real and open I am — and this has forced me to be that — the more beautiful connections are.”

What has Jamie-Lynn Sigler said about her MS symptoms?

When Sigler was first diagnosed, her symptoms were few and manageable, and so she kept acting, continuing her role on “The Sopranos,” she told WebMD.  She even landed her dream role as Belle in Broadway’s "Beauty and the Beast."

But around the time of her 2005 divorce from her first husband, A.J. Discala, Sigler began experiencing incontinence and difficulty balancing, particularly on her right side, she told WebMD.

Then, when she was around 29 years old, “I was shooting a pilot for Lifetime,” Sigler explained. “I started getting comments from the director asking me if I was limping. People were asking me if I was having issues walking and I hadn’t really noticed that anybody could see that I was struggling and it was a very scary moment for me because I wasn’t equipped with how to handle it.”

As her symptoms developed, Sigler concealed the illness as best she could and “struggled silently,” as she once described it in a 2019 essay.

“(MS has) definitely taken a lot from me: my ability to run, dance, jump, wear high heels,” she wrote. At the time, she shared she had a slight limp and needed medication to help control her bladder.

Since going public with her diagnosis, Sigler’s opened up about how she manages these symptoms and how she's doing now.

In the November interview with People, she said she can "can still accomplish the things that I want to do, whether it be at work or at home," even though she has trouble walking for long periods and cannot run.

When she and her husband, Cutter Dykstra, take their two sons to sports practices, she pushes a wagon that both holds her belongings and gives her something to lean on as she walks, she told the outlet. And when she landed a role on ABC’s “Big Sky,” production agreed to park her trailer closer to set to lessen her commute and made additional accommodations so she could focus on her job. At the airport, Sigler says she leans on her suitcases during long walks to her boarding gate.

“I’m uncomfortable 24/7,” Sigler told People. “I’m always a little stiff, I’m always a little achy. But I’ve been this way for so long, it’s my normal.”

"I don't want to sit out on life," says Sigler, so medications such as KESIMPTA which she takes once a month allow her to join in.

She admits that, in the past, she's had a hard time saying she's having a hard time. But Sigler's friends encourage her to be candid and they hold space for her to share how she's feeling.

Leaning on those, including Christina Applegate, who have been touched by the illness has been invaluable to Sigler. Applegate has helped Sigler find the laughter in her diagnosis. "We have these parts of ourselves that we feel like we could never share because who could love us if they knew this, right? Who could love us if they knew we felt this way or struggled this way?" But going through this with a friend reminds Sigler of her strength, worthiness and resilience.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com