Selma Blair Invites Us to Bear Witness to Her Pain
On her life with MS and final Dancing With the Stars appearance
Selma Blair does not want to leave Dancing With The Stars, the long running American reality-TV series. We know this because she says it twice, through tears, during episode five of season 31 on Disney+. And why shouldn’t she want to stay? During the first four episodes, Blair mesmerized the audience with intense, graceful performances that earned high scores — she was in no danger of being voted off the show. But success, as anyone with advanced Multiple Sclerosis (like Blair and myself) will tell you, is not enough to keep you in the game, even when you have a shot at winning.
Part 1: The Champion
I’ve followed Blair’s career closely since her initial MS diagnosis. Multiple Sclerosis is rare enough that whenever I learn of a celebrity joining our club, I feel a little jolt of exhilaration before realizing that, no, a neuro-degenerative illness with no cure is not a good thing. Perhaps it’s American team sports culture getting the better of me, but I think my excitement stems from hope. MS is is a widely-known but poorly understood illness, and celebrities are well positioned to help the general public understand its nuance and severity — that is, if they choose to share their lived experience, which most don’t. Then, in January 2019, Selma Blair was photographed with her cane on the red carpet of the Vanity Fair Oscars party. When Blair posted the iconic image to Instagram to very publicly disclose her diagnosis, I knew our illness had found its champion.
Blair’s willingness to share the intimate details of her life with MS was first showcased in the 2021 documentary Introducing: Selma Blair, directed by fellow autoimmune disease patient Rachel Fleit, and later in her memoir, Mean Baby. The film is full of raw footage of Blair experiencing the symptoms that accompany more severe cases of MS. During an interview scene, Blair struggles to speak until barely any sounds come out, and the camera does not cut away. Nobody intervenes to “help” her. Later, Blair ascends a staircase in what can only be described as a spider-like claw crawl, her legs providing just enough support to scoot her body forward. Relief washed over me as I watched Blair adapt to her disabled body because sometimes my body moves like that, too. Fleit made the radical choice to showcase Blair’s disability without the standard inspirational music or hero story arc (known in the disability community as #InspoPorn). By inviting cameras into her home, Blair showed a general audience (who likely knew MS existed, but nothing more) what it looks like, what it sounds like, and how it feels to have Multiple Sclerosis. For me and many others living with chronic pain and disability, this representation felt like a personalized gift.
Part 2: The Unruly Opponent
Multiple Sclerosis falls under the very wide umbrella of “chronic illness,” a term for a group of diseases with no cure. Patients can manage symptoms such as nerve pain, fatigue, brain fog, muscle weakness, spasticity, and a wide variety not mentioned through expensive medication, diet, exercise, and other holistic remedies. MS is also an autoimmune condition because it causes our immune systems to become over active. When a virus enters the body, our immune systems go into overdrive, mistakenly attacking the fatty coating (myelin sheath) that surrounds neural connections in the brain and spinal cord. When this coating is destroyed, neural paths are left exposed, and signals cannot fire as smoothly, earning Multiple Sclerosis the final title of “neurodegenerative illness.” The process of degeneration can manifest as “flares,” or symptoms ranging from fatigue and tingling fingers to full body paralysis. Selma Blair was diagnosed in her late 40s with a progressive (or, very aggressive) form of the illness. On episode five of DWTS, she mentions that she waited eight years for a diagnosis, and that besides riding her therapy horse, she was essentially bedridden during that time. MS is notoriously difficult to diagnose because it can mimic many other illnesses, and because doctors often follow a “wait and see” approach. I was lucky to be diagnosed young, at 17 years old. It meant I could get started on medications designed to prevent flares. I had the of privilege keeping MS in the back of my mind for 18 years until, at 35, I suffered a rare, stroke mimicking flare. I was paralyzed on the left side of my body for over a month, and though I recovered many functions, today I live with a motor disability, cognitive deficits, and chronic pain. There are roughly one million adults living with Multiple Sclerosis in the United States today, and the disease has earned the nickname “snowflake illness” because no two cases are exactly alike.
"For anyone living with chronic illness or chronic pain, Blair’s choice to leave the show…was the most relatable move possible."
You might be asking, if Blair was so sick, how could she have done even a single dance, let alone star in five episodes of Dancing With The Stars? This is the paradox of life with MS. With many other diseases, options to “fight” include lucky timing, the right medications, and a positive attitude. Living with MS is more like engaging, against your will, in a boxing match, only, your opponent is ten times your size and tends to doze off for months or years during a match — relapses followed by months or years of remission. Thanks to developments in the science of neuro-plasticity, patients actually can score points off of the MonSter (MS lingo), with physical therapy and repetitive brain training. My catastrophic flare did extensive damage to the motor strip of my brain — by outdated theories of the brain as a fixed machine with specific parts, I should not be able to walk, and yet thanks to years of physical therapy, I took a walk this morning. Multiple Sclerosis: 10, Me: 1.
Part 3: One Last, Gentle Dance
Knowing the give and take of our illness, I was not at all surprised that, despite years of bedrest and a treatment that could have killed her, Blair and her partner Sasha Farber took to the DWTS floor for the first time on September 19th. They a danced an exquisite Viennese waltz, earning a solid score from all three judges; they were triumphant. But, while her dance was nearly perfect, other symptoms of Blair’s illness were on full, public display that evening. In the post-dance interview with Alfonso Ribeiro, Blair, out of breath and radiant in her evening gown, halts several times while speaking, struggling to find and form words of gratitude. In that moment, Blair likely taught a general, not-currently-disabled audience something new about Multiple Sclerosis: that symptoms come and go, even within moments. Because Blair’s full attention had just been on her body, her speech was not as strong as if she had been rested. This is an incredibly accurate depiction of life with advanced MS, and I’m grateful to Blair for showcasing her speech issues. During the rest of her shortened season, Blair continued to teach about the specifics of MS.
On the third episode, “James Bond Night,” Blair wears a blindfold during her entire performance. In the pre-dance segment, Blair explains how her sensory experiences in a crowded studio with stage lighting make it difficult for her to focus on her body. Her partner Sasha has the idea (although I’d bet it came from her medical team) to wear a blindfold during the Rumba they’ll dance. And it worked! The judges and the audience were dazzled, but anyone who has experienced sensory overload understood, and we saw ourselves accurately represented onscreen. Once I became comfortable driving, many months after my major flare, I took an impromptu trip to Target. I barely made it to the dollar spot before I was gripped by intense waves of nausea. I stumbled back to my car and used an eye pillow and a breathing technique to calm the buzz in my brain. My physical therapist was unfazed — she told me that the vastness of high ceilings, the glare of fluorescent lights, and the hum of consumer activity was too much for me to process all at once. I underwent months of visual sensitivity training which included watching point-of-view videos of people navigating grocery stores. At first, I had to sit down to watch, and the nausea would hit me quickly. After a few weeks, I graduated to standing and watching, and finally I was able to start trying short trips with a friend. Today, I enjoy the target stroll once again, although I can easily hit my overload zone, and I’ve abandoned full carts because of my sensory needs.
By week five of DWTS, Blair had secured her spot as a contender — I thought she might even win. Instead, Blair shocked the audience by telling Sasha that her medical team had conferred, MRIs were involved, and “it all adds up” to her leaving the competition. Crying in Farber’s lap, Blair apologizes and promises him one last, gentle dance. For anyone living with a chronic illness or chronic pain, Blair’s leaving something she loves in order not to cause more damage was the most relatable move possible. While the audience and judges were stunned and in tears, I understood Blair’s decision, having made the same choice to leave behind a wonderful thirteen year teaching career just this year. As Blair and Farber dance an elegant waltz to “What the The World Needs Now is Love,” the studio audience and cast members are shown sobbing, equal parts heartbroken over Blair’s abrupt announcement and amazed that she’s dancing in front of them. I know that Blair is heartbroken too, but she takes on the role of consoler in her final episode, assuring everyone its for the best. The feeling that you must apologize for your body while being mentally strong is yet another deeply relatable experience for the chronic illness community, the disability community, and it’s a form of internalized ableism (viewing one’s own disability as a flaw that needs explanation). Viewers with few or no personal ties to chronic illness or disability likely felt shocked by Blair and her son’s calm demeanor as they waved a final goodbye, but I only felt deep sadness and pride.
I’m proud of Selma Blair, not because she “proved” she could “overcome” her disability and dance like everybody else, but because she taught the public that stories of disability do not always have Hollywood endings. Nobody can exercise their way out of a neurodegenerative autoimmune disease with no cure, and that fact doesn’t make Blair’s contributions to the show any less important. The entire Multiple Sclerosis community is better off now that Selma Blair has shown the world what MS can look like, and I’m so grateful that she, in her words, “chose to try.” Blair may not have won the dance competition, but she certainly didn’t fail by accepting her limitations. The next time I get disoriented in public, I will be better equipped to explain what’s happening. I’ll say, “I have MS, just like Selma Blair.”
Erin Ryan Heyneman (she/her) is a disabled creator, educator, and inclusion leader.