Jamie Lynn Sigler On Living Beyond MS, Never Heard Before Sopranos Stories, Motherhood & Finding Inner Personal Strength

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:00)
Let's welcome Jamie Lynn Sigler to the show. You may know her as Meadow Soprano from The Sopranos, but you also may know her from her new memoir, and so it is. Let's welcome Jamie Lynn Sigler to the show.

**Michael Bosstick** (0:12)
You can't be biased, but it's probably the greatest TV show ever created.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:15)
When you're thrust into that kind of fame that no one can understand.

**Michael Bosstick** (0:19)
At that age.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:20)
At that age.

**Jamie Lynn Sigler** (0:21)
Yes.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:22)
Are you aware, and you speak about this in the book, it seemed like you almost weren't aware, and then you became aware it all in one.

**Jamie Lynn Sigler** (0:30)
Yeah. You know, I think it's like this thing where it starts happening and you think, oh, this is what I want. This is what everybody wants. This is, and when you're so young and you have no reference, and you have no real life experience, it was like that thing where I kind of woke up one day and I'm like, oh my God, like everybody knows who I am. There's commentary on who I am and how I look and all this stuff. And I am not a fully formed human. I don't know how I feel about myself. I don't know who I am. And so, yes, it was very overwhelming. And everything about me and the business was green. I came from Long Island, no connections to the business. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. My dad ran an amateur men's baseball league.
I grew up like all of my other friends just doing community theater on the side. My goal was Broadway. It was never to be on TV or a film. That was like I just wanted to be on the stage. And so when I was cast in the show, of course I was excited, but very overwhelmed. I'd never been on a film set before. I had never, and when you were a kid, you kind of like fake it till you make it. And I was very much such a type A people pleaser type of kid that I never asked for help. I never asked any questions. So it almost feels like from the day I was cast and shot the pilot to like season two or three, I all of a sudden kind of had whiplash of like what just happened to the last few years of my life. And there was many times where I would look at my friends that were in college and pledging for their sororities and almost have envy of that normalcy and kind of what I thought the trajectory of my life was gonna be.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (2:16)
What was it like for you dealing with that is such a high and then finding out that you had MS having to hide that and be such a low at once? It's almost like, it almost counteracts each other.

**Jamie Lynn Sigler** (2:29)
It almost feels like it's a bit of a theme in my life. Like I feel like I'm always holding two ends of the stick at the same time. It's felt like at least for a very long time, between having an eating disorder at 16 when I started the show, right? It's almost became like prior to getting the MS diagnosis, there was always things about myself that I was hiding or feeling shameful of and shameful about. And so by the time I was diagnosed with MS, it almost like wasn't a surprise to me that something like that would happen. But I didn't give myself any opportunity to really digest and like figure out like what that meant. I just couldn't get off the train. I was still going. I was like, OK, well, we're going to hide this too from everybody and I'll just deal with it as it comes.
And unfortunately, no one in my life at the time like sat me down that did know. And it was only very few people that were like, no, no, no, this is a very serious diagnosis and we need to take care of you. The focus for everyone was how do we just keep this hidden so that your life doesn't get ruined.

**Michael Bosstick** (3:40)
Did you feel something? Did you notice something? Did something like, was something like symptom wise?

**Lauryn Bosstick** (3:44)
Yeah, like, how did you?

**Michael Bosstick** (3:46)
Yeah, I'm wondering how you knew at such a young age.

**Jamie Lynn Sigler** (3:47)
So when I was 19 a year prior to getting diagnosed with MS, I had these like weird neurological symptoms. I was had this like boyfriend and I was visiting him and his family in Florida and I felt like, you know that feeling right before pins and needles where your limb is asleep and you're kind of trying to wake it up and it's like this dull sort of, you know, I don't know, like buzzing inside your body. That's what I felt in my feet. And every day the sensation was rising and then it got to my knees and then it got to my thighs and by that point I was like, I think I should fly home. Something's wrong. I got on the plane and I remember when we landed and I got up to get my suitcase from the compartment, I could barely stand. And it took me like 45 minutes to walk from the plane to baggage claim. And my dad was there waiting for me and I just like collapsed in his arms. And I was like, you have to take me to the hospital. Something's wrong. And at that point, they had ruled, I immediately went into the ER, MRI, spinal tap, CAT scans, everything, everything was inconclusive. They ruled out MS at the time, did all this blood work. And for 11 days, I was like paralyzed basically. I could not move my legs. We were getting ready to film season three.