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Christina Applegate got candid about the difficulty of losing her ex-boyfriend, Lee Grivas, after he suffered a fatal overdose in 2008. The star has mostly kept quiet about the tragedy over the years, until Tuesday's episode of her podcast, MeSsy, in which she spoke to Sopranos actor Robert Iler about his own struggles with addiction. "I kind of don't understand sometimes, like with Lee, which people know about. You could Google it, whatever," Christina began. "My boyfriend, who passed away, it was like I tried everything, right? And he still wanted to escape. When he passed away, it was just like, '[Expletive] man.'" The aspiring photographer was found dead inside his apartment in Los Angeles in July 2008 when he was just 26 years old, after suffering an overdose. At the time, Christina shared an emotional statement, despite the couple having split months earlier. "I am profoundly saddened," the statement read. "Lee was an incredible human being who was an extremely important and beautiful part of my life." "He is missed beyond words. He touched so many, and I feel much sadness for his mother, brother and all of his family and friends," she concluded. The duo had met when she was starring in the Broadway musical Sweet Charity in 2006, after she separated from her husband, Johnathon Schaech, a year earlier. She is now married to Dutch musician Martyn LeNoble, and the couple share a 14-year-old daughter, Sadie. Christina has rarely spoken of Lee since his death, yet opened up about the grieving process on her MeSsy podcast when her beloved father, Robert Priddy, passed away in April. "I lost my dad, but I had someone say, 'Which part of the stages of grief are you on?'" she recalled on the show. Learn more about Christina's ongoing health battle below... "And it was such a profound thing because I had to say to one of my dearest friends, 'No. I don't do stages of grief. There is no set rules as to how I'm grieving this.'" She added that the grieving process was just like coming to terms with "chronic illnesses or diseases that we go through". "There are no set rules, and you have to forgive yourself for that. Because when she said that, I was like, 'Oh, [expletive]. Maybe I should be doing, you know, anger, denial…till I get to the end of ellipsis and then whatever.' I don't wanna get to the point where it doesn't hurt that he's gone," she concluded. Christina related the loss of her father to the grief she felt when diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2021. "It's getting to the point where it's getting easier to accept that he's gone. And with MS, it's getting easier to accept where I'm at. I didn't say I've accepted. It's easier getting to the place of acceptance," she said. The blonde beauty uses her podcast, which she co-hosts with fellow MS survivor Jamie-Lynn Sigler, to bring awareness to the daily struggles that are part and parcel of the neurological disease. MS symptoms can include vision problems, numbness or weakness, balance issues, muscle stiffness, cognitive issues and mood changes, and Christina has frequently recounted moments where she was screaming in pain, or simply could not get out of bed.
