Christina Applegate Says Ed O’Neill ‘Raised Me’

Christina Applegate’s Married… With Children papa, Ed O'Neill, was this week’s guest on the MeSsy with Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler podcast. “I don’t even know how to explain this person,” Applegate said as she introduced her fictional father. “He raised me, so if you don’t like anything about me, it’s his fault.” 

To be fair, she added, “If you do like anything about me, also his fault.”

Applegate almost didn’t get to play Kelly Bundy to O’Neill’s Al Bundy. At 15, the young actress read the pilot script and concluded, “This is toilet humor. And I don’t do toilet humor. It’s totally gross.” (She wasn’t wrong about Married… jokes, even though she claims she was a “shit snot” at the time.)

Married… with Children hired two other kid actors — David Faustino wasn’t an original Bundy either — and shot the pilot. “It didn’t work,” Applegate remembered. “They came to me and said, ‘Please, please just watch the pilot that we did.’ And I’ll never forget putting in the VHS tape of the MWC pilot or what it was called at the time, Not The Cosbys.”

Applegate claims she and her mother were determined not to laugh. But when O’Neill “came on, you had hit your hand on a cactus instead of the alarm, and you had a bandage on your hand. And my mom and I were like, ‘Oh God, this is fucking hysterical. I hate myself for loving this.’”

That was that. Applegate and Faustino auditioned for the Bundy kids “just as a formality,” she explained, “and then the rest is history. You and Katey (Sagal, who played Peg Bundy) just killed me, man.” 

How long did the family stay together? “Too many years,” said Applegate before correcting herself. “So many years.”

Eleven seasons, confirmed O’Neill, although he “thought we'd be canceled after six shows. Because we were making fun of obese women. We were making fun of midgets.”

“We can’t say midgets,” Applegate scolded.

“That’s what we called them in those days,” O’Neill said, correcting himself.

Despite her call for sensitivity, Applegate ranted about the subject matter Fox wouldn’t let Married… With Children get away with back in the day. “I watch TV, and I’m like, it is so much more than what we were doing. We were like Little House on the Prairie compared to the stuff that’s on television now.” 

What was it like having Applegate as a TV daughter? “Christina was great,” O’Neill explained. “She’s got a photographic memory. She knew all the lines before anybody could possibly even read them.”

Not good enough for Applegate. “This is really important to know,” she insisted. “Julie Bowen or me? Favorite daughter.”  

The question comparing Applegate to Bowen, O’Neill’s offspring on Modern Family, was a joke but O’Neill answered it anyway. “First of all, you’re completely different people,” he replied. “Secondly though, the thing that you both have that I really like is good hearts. You’re good-hearted.” 

Applegate has the same affection for O’Neill. “Years and years of my life spent with this man,” she said. “He’s an incredible actor. He’s an incredible human being.”