Emma Caulfield Ford, who played the demon Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has goner public with the fact that she’s struggling with multiple sclerosis. Emma, 49, has told Vanity Fair that the reason she is sharing her diagnosis has completely to do with her six-year-old daughter, Knightley Lake, who she had with husband Mark Leslie Ford.
“I’m so tired of not being honest,” she detailed to the publication. “And beyond that, my daughter has changed my perspective, as I think anybody who is a parent can attest. She’s 6. She’s just started first grade [and] it got me thinking about her and how full of joy and active she is, and she’s just a remarkable little creature.”
Symptoms — starting with some facial numbness — first surfaced back in 2010. Said Emma, “MS has been around in my sphere for a very, very long time. I knew enough to be, like, ‘Oh my God!’ I’m trying to keep my shit together and I’ve got to go back to work. So that was my first experience of keeping everything really quiet and showing up and just doing my job … If me talking about this offers some solace or encouragement to somebody who has it, that’s so great … I don’t own this condition. My experience is simply my own. I could never tell anybody else what to do if they have MS. I’m not an expert, I’m not a doctor. I am just me. This is how it feels for me.”
The actress most recently played Dottie Jones/Sarah Proctor on the Disney+ series, WandaVision.