Emma Caulfield Reveals MS Diagnosis: ‘I’m So Tired of Not Being Honest’
Buffy the Vampire Slayer vet Emma Caulfield has revealed that she multiple sclerosis, a health battle she has kept secret for more than a decade.
“Back in 2010, I was working on [executive producer] Marti Noxon’s Gigantic, and prior to starting that job, I woke up one morning and the left side of my face felt like there were a million ants crawling on it,” the actress (who is now going by Emma Caulfield Ford, following her 2017 marriage to actor Mark Leslie Ford) recalls to Vanity Fair.
An official MS diagnosis soon followed.
“It was like an out-of-body experience,” she tells the mag. “I’m like, ‘No, that’s not possible.’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ [The doctor] was very matter of fact about it…. It was literally a kind of nightmare.”
Caulfield says she hid her condition all these years (including from the cast and crew of her most recent TV gig, WandaVision) because she “didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to not hire me,” adding, “There are already plenty of reasons to not hire people, reasons most actors don’t even know. ‘You look like my ex-girlfriend… You’re too short. You’re too tall. You look mean. You look too nice. You don’t have the right color eyes.’ I knew in my bones that if you talk about this, you’re just going to stop working. That’s it.”
MS is not going to prevent Caulfield from reprising her WandaVision role of Dottie in the forthcoming Disney+ spinoff Agatha: Coven of Chaos. “I am going back to work!” she declares to VF. “Everyone has been notified that needs to be notified. I can’t put myself through what I did with WandaVision again. I can’t do that. They did nothing wrong…. They had no idea what was going on with me. They didn’t ask anything of me that was like, ‘I need to call my agent!’ They’re asking me to just sit and chat and do my dialogue. It’s not hard. [I told them now] knowing that I shouldn’t be out in this [Atlanta] heat at all. And if I am, I need to be taking way more precautions than I am.”
Caulfield, whose father also has MS, goes on to share that she decided to go public with her condition because “I’m so tired of not being honest.” Her 6-year-old daughter also “changed my perspective,” she explains. “As I think anybody who is a parent can attest. I know that she has a 30 percent greater chance of coming down with this, just luck of the draw for her. She’s 6. She’s just started first grade…. It got me thinking about her and how full of joy and active she is, and she’s just such a remarkable little creature.”
On average, Caulfield says she is feeling “okay right now,” adding, “It’s a weird thing to say when you’re given a diagnosis like that, but truthfully, my attitude is not crumbling under the fear of ‘What if’ or ‘What can,’ or ‘What has’ for other people. I just have to keep going.”
You can read Caulfield’s full Vanity Fair interview here.
I’m sorry to hear this. That disease challenges those who have it, often profoundly. I hope Ms. Caulfield’s progression is slow and mild and wish her my best.
Best wishes to Emma🙏🏻 I’m thrilled to see what is going to happen with Dottie next.
By the way, Disney+ changed the name of the spinoff to Agatha: Coven of Chaos.
I feel for her. MS is a horrific autoimmune disease which gets progressively worse as you get older to a point you can’t function properly. It usually manifests with white matter lesions in your spine and brain which cause havoc.
i have this too, so do many others. hope she’s seeing a good neurologist. glad she opened up about it. hope the industry doesn’t punish her and not hire her because she CAN still work. Only thing that worries me is overheating. MS hates heat. Especially internal heat. Don’t get sick, a fever can worsen symptoms.
Love her and love her eloquently she described how we can view buffy today
10 years is a long time to keep it inside. Wishing her the best.
I agree with her. A lot of hard work goes into shows and Buffy is still my favorite show of all time. I will continue to watch it many times over and enjoy the positives
Wishing Ms. Caulfield prayers & well wishes for more good days than bad. Bless you.
One of the unfortunate aspects of being in the public eye with a serious illness that can affect movement, speech, memory, or cognition (including, but not necessarily MS) is that if it gets bad enough without being disclosed, people will speculate in inaccurate and reputationally harmful ways (see Annette Funicello’s MS mistaken to be alcoholism, Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s-related delays mistaken to be lack of professional consideration, and Bruce Willis’ aphasia mistaken for professional laziness).
According to Kevin Smith who directed Willis in Copout, Bruce is supremely arrogant and refuses to be directed.
Kevin was a massive fan right up to where he had to keep saddling Tracy Morgan who was acutely suffering from his diabetes at the time, with more lines and acting work.
I remember one scene he described where they’re at the cafe. Bruce refused to do most of his lines so Kevin had to rewrite the scene so Bruce got to just sit there.
I don’t know how long aphasia takes to manifest but that was a very long time ago.
I truly feel for Bruce. A nightmare existence IMO to not be able to communicate.
Kevin wrote about it in one of his books. Doesn’t trash Bruce. Describes what happened and how let down he felt.
They’d worked together on Die Hard 5 and hung out between takes. Bruce was a different person on Cop Out.
Kevin’s final take on it: Bruce needs to direct his own movies, officially.
I was relieved because I couldn’t understand why it was crappy even with him at the helm.
Back to Emma and others like MJF and Anette, it’s frustrating.
On a tangent, I’m still pissed at the Breaking Bad guy for taking a wheelchair Oscar winning role away from an actor who lives in one. I think that’s why I can no longer remember his name. Did he ever apologize?
At least they’re not casting Deaf roles with non deaf people. Go CODA!!