‘Married… With Children’ Star Christina Applegate Gives Touching Praise to Her TV Mom Katey Sagal
The Bundys may not have been a real family, but Katey Sagal was a real one.
The sad reality of starting an acting career at a young age has always been that the adults whom child performers encounter on set rarely have the kids’ best interests at heart. As such, when Christina Applegate became a professional performer at just three months old, appearing in the soap opera Days of Our Lives and in a commercial for baby bottles, she was unintentionally beginning the process of growing up far too quickly, a phenomenon that only intensified when she achieved national superstardom after joining the cast of Married… With Children in her mid-teens.
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Thankfully for Applegate, Peggy Bundy had been around the block a few times before, and Sagal was able to look out for her TV daughter and play the mentor role that’s missing from too many child stars’ supporting casts. When Sagal appeared in a recent episode of Applegate’s podcast MeSsy, the grown-up Kelly Bundy effusively praised her guest’s performance as the rare good person in a kid actor’s life.
“You were a safe space for me,” Applegate, now 53, admitted to her fake mom. “What made you so comforting to me is that you had lived. You had lived a lot of life and a lot of scarring and things had taken place and now you were on that side of strength, and I needed that. I needed that so badly in my life: a stable person. And you were that stability to me always. I always knew if I came to you with something or I cried that you would comfort me, that I’d feel safe.”
Sagal, who was in early recovery from alcohol and drug addiction by the time Married… With Children premiered in 1987, admitted that she also was fighting to find stability during those early years of the show. “It’s so interesting because I was so new to my own inner journey because I was new to my own recovery journey, but along with that, I was learning very rapidly how to be honest with myself and how important that is for all of us to be that way,” Sagal told Applegate. “And I did have that sense that there was nobody really for you to — I guess what I’m saying is I became very forthright with my journey, which I think opens the door for other people, i.e. you, Chrissy, to be forthright with yours.”
“And, you know, as you’re saying I provided a safe space for you, you were also providing that for me,” Sagal said to her young co-star. “Because I was learning so much about myself as a person that you would think would be a mature person.”
“I could relate to you. I could absolutely relate to the pieces of you,” Sagal told Applegate. “And so, I wanna say that the safety you were feeling was also the umbrella of recovery. That’s kind of what you were feeling because that was the umbrella around me. I was terrified.”
In addition to the thanks Kelly Bundy has for her mom’s invaluable support and advice, Applegate has levied similar praise for the Married… With Children patriarch Ed O’Neill, once saying of Al Bundy, “He raised me, so if you don’t like anything about me, it’s his fault.”
She then added, “If you do like anything about me, also his fault.”
