The “Sopranos” actress and MS patient advocate explains the smart way she covered up her accident.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler once lost control of her bladder in front of athlete boyfriend

The "Sopranos" actress and MS patient advocate explains the smart way she covered up her accident.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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May 6, 2026 7:00 a.m. ET

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Jamie-Lynn Sigler in New York City on May 4. Credit:

Gary Gershoff/Getty

- Jamie-Lynn Sigler describes losing control of her bladder while at a Yankees game with an athlete boyfriend she refers to as Tom in her new book, *And So It Is...: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope.*

- The star of *The Sopranos* writes that she had a smart way of hiding what had happened: asking her actress friend JoAnna Garcia to spill a beer on her, which Garcia did.

- Looking back, Sigler notes, she was "pretending to be strong" and to ignore her illness.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler. 44. is very open about living with multiple sclerosis these days.

But she writes in her new book, *And So It Is...: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope*, that this wasn't always the case. She recalls having a relationship with an athlete she refers to as Tom at a time when she tried to forget about the challenges she faced and the stresses of living with the chronic autoimmune disease.

"It's strange—­ with [ex] Jerry [Ferrara], I had laid it all out immediately. I had needed him, and I'd felt comfortable expressing that need. But with Tom, I wanted to be someone different," Sigler explains. "Someone unburdened. I wanted to reassure him: This won't affect your life. Don’t worry. I was reassuring him, as opposed to being reassured. This felt like a more comfortable place for me at the time. Maybe it was less honest, but it felt no less real. Though he was kind and sweet about it, we never really talked about my diagnosis again. He was not going to be the person taking me to infusions or coaching my walk around town. He was all about fun, and disease isn’t fun. So we put it behind us."

Edie Falco, James Gandolfini, Robert Iler, and Jamie-Lynn Sigler on 'The Sopranos' in 2007.

Craig Blankenhorn/HBO

Sigler notes that her body did not cooperate.

"On a date at a Yankees game, in a box, surrounded by people, I suddenly lost control of my bladder," the *Sopranos* actress recalls. "I hadn’t had something like that happen in so long that I was in shock. Completely mortified, I didn’t know what to do. I was sitting in the front row of the box, talking to some people I had just met, and had no possible way out."

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She thought up an idea quickly, and it involved fellow actress JoAnna Garcia, whom she quickly texted. Garcia was there to cheer on her now husband, former New York Yankees player Nick Swisher.

"I need you to come over and spill a drink on me, I told her. Now," Sigler writes. "She was part of my girl crew, so she knew what this probably meant and immediately understood the assignment. This wasn't something we had had to do before, but we're actresses—­ we can improv on the fly. Within minutes, she was there, came up to me like she was giving me a hug, and casually spilled a beer on me. Crisis averted."

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Sigler says the experience would previously have "sent me spiraling," but Tom made her feel like she could do it.

"With Jerry, I was honest—­ but I was also at my weakest," says Sigler, who began dating the *Entourage* star in 2008. "With Tom, I was experimenting with strength. Or pretending to be strong. Maybe both."

Sigler didn't identify Tom, whom she describes as "handsome, charming, and larger than life in the way only those types of guys can be." She has dated professional athletes, though, including her husband of 10 years, former pro baseball player Cutter Dykstra, and Mark Sanchez, a former professional football player she dated briefly in 2010.

Mark Sanchez and Jamie-Lynn Sigler in 2010.

Kevin Mazur/WireImage

"We bantered, and the feeling was electric," she writes. "It was wild, undeniable chemistry from the jump. You know when you meet someone and it's just there? The world fell away, and I forgot about all the bulls--- for the first time in a long time." Being with him, she adds, was "the most carefree chapter of my life. Maybe even the only truly carefree one."

The euphoric feeling is what made her attempt to push her condition out of her mind, until she couldn't.

*Sigler's book, And So It Is...: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope*, is available at book stores now.

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Source: “EW Memoirs”