Selma Blair says she drank alcohol to mask symptoms of multiple sclerosis, a disclosure that arrives in the middle of a criminal case and a public dispute over what a medical emergency looks like to the people standing nearby.

The actor made the comments on a new episode of “The Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg Show.” According to TMZ, which first reported the interview, Blair said she had used alcohol since “a very young age” to soothe headaches, anxiety and nerve pain. She acknowledged she does not live a “sober sober lifestyle” and said drinking is something she “cannot do.”

Those are her words, in her framing. No medical records have been made public, and nothing in the available record independently verifies the account beyond Blair’s own telling.

How Selma Blair Described Her Drinking On The Podcast

The interview was recorded before the events that put her in handcuffs. McCarthy wrote on Instagram that the conversation predated “the recent events involving Selma Blair,” adding: “Nothing but love for Selma and this conversation.”

Blair’s description of self-medication is specific. She tied drinking to nerve pain, one of the harder symptoms associated with MS, and to anxiety and headaches. She also drew the line herself: she is not sober, and she knows alcohol is something she should not touch.

That admission does real work in the record. It is a first-person statement about a pattern, not a clinical finding, and it does not by itself explain what happened on a plane in October.

“Neither flight attendant has spoken publicly. Their names have not been released in the source material reviewed here. Their injuries — bite marks and a bloody nose, according to the pilot’s communication with air traffic control — are documented in the audio, but no independent medical record or account from them appears in the available reporting.”

The Arrest Timeline, Separated From The Allegations

The flight was a Delta service from Los Angeles to New York. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said Blair was accused of injuring two flight attendants, then kicking a police officer who was taking her to a hospital and kicking a nurse after she arrived.

She pleaded not guilty on Monday to two counts of assault on state charges involving the officer and the nurse, according to the Associated Press. A judge issued a protective order covering both. Blair is free on bail, and her next court date is in January.

The FBI also issued her a notice charging assault related to her actions aboard the aircraft, a federal law enforcement official told the AP on condition of anonymity. Air traffic communications recorded the Delta pilot asking the tower for medical personnel at the gate to treat bite marks and a bloody nose, while saying ambulances were not necessary.

That audio is evidence of injuries. It is not evidence of a diagnosis, and it does not settle intent.

What Her Representatives Say About The Medical Emergency

A statement released Friday by Blair’s representatives said she “experienced a medical emergency on the flight,” that “there was no attempt to open the door of the aircraft” and that she “did not intend to harm anyone.” It said her MS has been public since 2018 and that she also has pseudobulbar affect, described in the statement as a neurological condition secondary to her MS that “bears directly on how a medical episode presents to people who do not know her.”

The statement added that she travels with a service dog and that authorities took the dog from her.

Pseudobulbar affect involves uncontrolled laughing or crying and is documented as a complication of neurological disease. The statement is an assertion by her side, not a court finding. No medical documentation has been filed publicly in the case.

Why The 2016 Flight Keeps Returning To This Story

This is not the first time Blair has linked alcohol, medication and air travel. In 2016 she apologized for statements she made during a flight from Cancun to Los Angeles, saying she had mixed alcohol with medication and blacked out.

Friday’s statement complained that the public version of the recent events had been “built almost entirely on a police statement and a decade-old headline.” The statement did not name the headline. The 2016 episode is the only decade-old in-flight incident involving Blair in the public record, which makes the reference plain enough without being confirmed by her representatives.

The parallel cuts both ways. It supports her team’s argument that a pattern of alcohol and medication problems predates this case and shapes how it is read. It also gives reporters a documented prior incident to cite, which is precisely what the statement objects to.

What Is Confirmed, What Is Alleged, And What Is Absent

Confirmed: Selma Blair has MS, disclosed in 2018. She was charged, she pleaded not guilty, and she is due back in court in January. The podcast interview exists, with McCarthy’s disclaimer attached.

Alleged: that she injured two flight attendants. That account comes from the Port Authority, and the state charges filed so far involve the officer and the nurse, not the attendants.

Absent: medical records, the full incident report, and any judicial finding on what caused the episode. Also absent from the sourcing is any data on how MS is diagnosed and treated in African health systems, and nothing here should be read as a statement about that.

The Bigger Picture For Selma Blair And The MS Community

The story has two audiences, and they are reading different documents. One is following a criminal case with a January court date and a federal notice. The other is listening to a 54-year-old actor describe drinking to get through nerve pain, in an interview taped before any of it happened.

For the second group, the Selma Blair interview is a rare first-person account of self-medication inside chronic illness, delivered by someone who has been a public face of MS since 2018. For the first, her words are context, not exoneration, and her representatives’ statement is a legal argument rather than a medical record.

Both readings can be true at once, and the case will not resolve the question either way. Courts decide intent and injury. They do not decide what it is like to live with nerve pain, which is the part Blair was describing, and the part no docket will capture.

{“@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{“@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What did Selma Blair say about drinking?”, “acceptedAnswer”: {“@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “In an interview on The Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg Show, recorded before her airport arrest, Blair said she had used alcohol from a very young age to soothe headaches, anxiety and nerve pain. She said she does not live a sober lifestyle and that drinking is something she cannot do.”}}, {“@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is pseudobulbar affect, which her representatives cited?”, “acceptedAnswer”: {“@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Her representatives described it as a neurological condition secondary to her MS that affects how a medical episode presents to people who do not know her. It involves uncontrolled laughing or crying and is documented as a complication of neurological disease. The claim has not been tested in court or backed by publicly filed medical records.”}}, {“@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What charges does Selma Blair face and what happens next?”, “acceptedAnswer”: {“@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “She pleaded not guilty to two counts of assault on state charges involving a police officer and a nurse, and a judge issued a protective order covering both. The FBI also issued her a notice charging assault over her actions aboard the aircraft. She is free on bail with a court date in January.”}}]}

Follow AFRILATEST on Google News

Receive alerts for Selma Blair and more like it.

Advertisement

FIRST TIME REACTIONS:

Be the first to leave us a comment – Selma Blair Says She Drank to Mask MS Symptoms, down the comment section.

📌 Read more in our World News section.

JOIN US ON OUR SOCIAL MEDIA:

📘 Facebook | 🐦 Twitter | 📸 Instagram | 📌 Pinterest | ▶️ YouTube | 💼 LinkedIn | 🌀 Tumblr | 📖 Flipboard | 💬 WhatsApp | ✈️ Telegram

About Rose Green

Rose Green is an entertainment and lifestyle author at AfriLatest. With a passion for storytelling, she contributes creative and thought-provoking content, capturing the imagination of readers. Rose specializes in entertainment news, celebrity updates, and lifestyle trends, sparking meaningful conversations across diverse topics.

View all articles by Rose Green

A woman who accuses Russell Brand of anal rape told police she was left bleeding for days and later learned she had an anal tear, as the Russell Brand trial continued at Southwark Crown Court in London on Wednesday.

Brand, 51, denies three charges of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault. The allegations span a decade, from 1999 to 2009, and involve six women. He has said he has never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity, and he has pleaded not guilty to every charge.

Wednesday was among the busiest days of the trial: the jury heard from three of the six accusers, according to Deadline’s live coverage.

What The Complainant Told Police About The Night In 2009

The woman, referred to in reporting as Complainant 5 because she has a lifelong right to anonymity, gave evidence from behind a screen. Her two-hour 2024 police interview was played to the jury, and she was then cross-examined.

She said she met Brand at a Hammersmith Apollo stand-up show in early 2009, went to his dressing room and performed oral sex on him, despite having a boyfriend at the time. She told officers she made clear she did not want penetrative sex that night. Days later, after repeated messages from Brand, she agreed to go to his home in Hampstead, north London, expecting vaginal sex.

According to her account, an associate let her in and told her Brand was on the phone to America. When he came downstairs, she said, he told her: “This is the best decision you’ve ever made.” She said he then told her to shower because “your hair smells funny”, and the BBC reported she also said he made her brush her teeth.

She said the first part of the encounter was consensual vaginal sex with a condom. She then alleged Brand turned her onto her front and anally raped her, ignoring her requests to stop, and that she realised afterwards he had removed the condom. She alleged he said: “I want you to feel my cum.” After it was over, she said, he looked “absolutely horrified” and told her: “You need to clean up the mess that you’ve made.”

She told police the pain was severe enough that she sat on an ice cube tray, that she was later told she had an anal tear, and that she was tested for HIV, which came back negative. She said she struggled with alcohol and went to rehab in 2023.

The Cross-Examination At The Heart Of The Russell Brand Trial

Ian Winter KC, defending, put it to her repeatedly that she had consented and regretted it afterwards. He noted she had gone to Brand’s house knowing she would have sex with him, that she knew his reputation, and that he had won The Sun newspaper’s “Shagger of the Year” award three years running.

She accepted she had been a “massive fan”, that she had made “a huge mistake” with her boyfriend, and that she went willingly. She rejected the suggestion that willingness to attend amounted to consent to what followed.

“We’re not here to discuss my morality. We’re here to discuss criminality,” she told the court. “I thought I was going to have penetrative vaginal sex.” She added: “Just because you go somewhere willingly, that does not mean the outcome at the end is [necessarily] consensual.”

Winter also suggested Brand asked her to shower because he disliked the smell of alcohol, citing what the BBC reported as his “soberism”, rather than her hair.

The Text Exchange Both Sides Accept

A text exchange months after the alleged assault is not in dispute. She said she ran into Brand at the Edinburgh Festival and he messaged her out of the blue; she asked why he was writing.

“Because you’re dirty and I want to push you further,” she said he replied. She told the court she responded: “I think you’ve pushed me far enough, you treated me like an animal.” Brand apologised immediately, she said.

Winter suggested the messages showed Brand had pushed and degraded her but had not raped her. She replied: “I didn’t consent.”

At one point she described carrying “a lot of burden” and said she felt guilt because she went to the house willingly: “I carried that feeling of guilt and shame … for exactly the reason that you are doing right here, making me feel like I brought it on myself.”

The Record So Far, And What It Does Not Show

The prosecution has said all six complainants came forward after Channel 4’s Russell Brand: In Plain Sight documentary, and that none of the women know each other. The court has been told Brand declined to answer questions when interviewed by police. His defence is expected to be set out later in the trial.

No verdict exists. Charges are accusations, not findings, and none of the allegations reported here has been proved. The account above reflects sworn testimony and recorded police interviews played or given in open court.

For readers outside the UK, the procedure matters as much as the testimony. Complainants in English sexual-offence cases can give evidence from behind a screen and retain anonymity for life — arrangements that differ sharply between jurisdictions, which is why cross-border coverage of this case often omits the safeguards built into the London proceedings.

The complainants’ evidence is now complete. The court returns on Thursday to hear other witnesses.

What To Watch

The question for the jury is narrow: whether the prosecution proved an absence of consent to a specific act, not whether the complainant behaved wisely beforehand. The defence has built its case on the gap between willingness to travel to Hampstead and consent to anal sex — a distinction the law treats as decisive but which cross-examination is designed to blur.

Watch for the defence case, the remaining witnesses, and the judge’s eventual directions on consent. Until then, the Russell Brand trial remains a proceeding, not a conclusion.

Follow AFRILATEST on Google News

Receive alerts for Russell Brand trial and more like it.

FIRST TIME REACTIONS:

Be the first to leave us a comment – Russell Brand Trial: Accuser Says He Treated Her Like An Animal, down the comment section.

Advertisement

📌 Read more in our World News section.

JOIN US ON OUR SOCIAL MEDIA:

📘 Facebook | 🐦 Twitter | 📸 Instagram | 📌 Pinterest | ▶️ YouTube | 💼 LinkedIn | 🌀 Tumblr | 📖 Flipboard | 💬 WhatsApp | ✈️ Telegram

About Clare Dominic

Clare Dominic is the Editor at AfriLatest. With a background in journalism and a passion for storytelling, she oversees the editorial process to ensure content is accurate, engaging, and relevant. Clare works closely with contributors to maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity across all news, sports, and lifestyle coverage.

View all articles by Clare Dominic

Starfall flew for the second time on Tuesday morning, and SpaceX still has not said what it carried.

A Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida at 7:04 a.m. ET on the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission with 32 payloads aboard, according to Teslarati. The first stage, flying for the 19th time, landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas about nine minutes later. The Starfall capsule was scheduled to separate last, 2 hours and 48 minutes after liftoff, well after the final customer satellite came off the upper stage at roughly one hour and nine minutes. SpaceX later posted that the payload deployment sequence was complete.

That long gap in the timeline is the story. Nearly everything confirmed about Starfall comes from regulatory filings, a mission timeline and one line on a mission page, not from a payload manifest.

At liftoff, SpaceX said the vehicle “enables affordable, routine access to a microgravity environment, providing unique opportunities for on-orbit manufacturing, scientific research, and testing.” Spaceflight Now noted that the company has still not said what, if anything, is aboard this Starfall capsule.

What The Second Starfall Capsule Flight Confirmed, And What It Did Not

Confirmed: the launch, the booster recovery, the 32-payload count, and the company’s statement that deployment finished. Confirmed also, from the FAA’s May environmental assessment, is the hardware itself. It is a disk about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall, weighing roughly 4,600 pounds, able to bring 2,200 pounds of payload back to Earth.

Confirmed further is a change in posture. When Teslarati reported on the first Starfall flight, planned for Tuesday, June 23, SpaceX had made no public announcement of the vehicle at all; nearly everything known came from FAA and FCC filings. This time Starfall is an item name on the official mission page, listed beside paying rideshare customers.

Not confirmed: where it comes down and how. A preview published in June described a Pacific Ocean recovery, with a heat shield that jettisons just before splashdown so recovery teams can retrieve capsule and shield separately. SpaceX has not said whether this flight follows the same plan.

Why SpaceX Built A Disk Instead Of A Cone

Dragon and every other operational cargo return capsule use a cone. Starfall does not. The flat disk geometry maximizes structural efficiency and payload volume relative to mass, which matters when the product being returned is not people but manufactured material: pharmaceuticals, protein crystals, semiconductors and optical fibre that cannot be made in the presence of gravity.

The FAA documents go further than the launch commentary. They describe Starfall’s long-term purpose as building a “self-sustaining commercial in-space manufacturing market,” and as a potential successor to the industrial capabilities of the International Space Station, which is due to retire in the late 2020s. Military rapid global cargo delivery is a parallel application under active discussion with the Pentagon. Starfall is designed to be mass-produced and launched on either Falcon 9 or Starship.

What The Starfall Capsule Reveals About SpaceX’s Business Model

The same rocket that carried Starfall also carried a competitor’s hardware. Varda Space Industries flew its W-Series 7 capsule on Bandwagon-5, a spacecraft about three times smaller, to test whether microgravity improves the solubility of a cancer drug called Protac. It is Varda’s ninth reentry capsule; W-8 and W-9 launched earlier this month on Transporter-18. SpaceX has been Varda’s launch provider since the company’s first Falcon 9 rideshare contract in 2021.

SpaceX controls launch access, which makes it the landlord for every competitor in orbital return. Starfall converts that position into ownership of the return service itself. Teslarati’s earlier reporting put Starfall’s specification at roughly 30 times more payload per mission than the standalone competitors SpaceX currently flies.

For operators outside the United States, including Earth-observation and communications programmes in Africa that buy Falcon 9 rideshare slots, the relevant question is contractual rather than technical. When the launch provider also sells the downmass service, it sets both the schedule and the terms. That is an assessment of published structure, not a claim about any announced pricing or policy.

The launch came hours before SpaceX posted third-quarter results after markets closed. The company reported revenue of $14.58 billion, up 161 percent year over year, with its Super Intelligence segment the largest at $7.56 billion. On the same call, chief executive Elon Musk said SpaceX and Tesla have each formed special committees of independent directors to study a possible merger at shareholder request, and that he cannot sit on them because he is a conflicted party. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” he said, while adding that treating a merger as certain “would be overstating it.”

The Starfall Capsule’s Legacy Depends On The Next Flight

Two FAA-approved demonstration flights were the plan. If Tuesday’s reentry, parachute sequence and recovery went as intended, the second follows. A successful pair would position SpaceX to offer Starfall as a commercial service, likely to pharmaceutical and materials science customers first, before scaling toward military and broader manufacturing use.

Until then, the record stays thin: a disk, a mass budget, a launch timeline, and a company that has learned it can fly hardware nobody has described. The Starfall capsule is now a public item on a public mission page. It is still not a public programme.

{“@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{“@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is SpaceX’s Starfall capsule?”, “acceptedAnswer”: {“@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “It is a disk-shaped reentry capsule. The FAA’s May environmental assessment describes a vehicle about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall, weighing roughly 4,600 pounds and able to return up to 2,200 pounds of payload from orbit. It flew for the second time on the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission.”}}, {“@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Did SpaceX say what the Starfall capsule carried on this flight?”, “acceptedAnswer”: {“@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “No. SpaceX has not said what, if anything, was aboard. The company described Starfall only in general terms, as enabling access to a microgravity environment for on-orbit manufacturing, research and testing.”}}, {“@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Where will the Starfall capsule land?”, “acceptedAnswer”: {“@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “SpaceX has not published where or how this Starfall comes down. A June preview described a Pacific Ocean recovery with the heat shield jettisoning before splashdown, but the company has not confirmed whether this flight used the same plan.”}}]}

Follow AFRILATEST on Google News

Receive alerts for Starfall capsule and more like it.

Advertisement

FIRST TIME REACTIONS:

Be the first to leave us a comment – SpaceX’s Starfall Capsule Flies Again, Still No Manifest, down the comment section.

📌 Read more in our World News section.

JOIN US ON OUR SOCIAL MEDIA:

📘 Facebook | 🐦 Twitter | 📸 Instagram | 📌 Pinterest | ▶️ YouTube | 💼 LinkedIn | 🌀 Tumblr | 📖 Flipboard | 💬 WhatsApp | ✈️ Telegram

    

                

            
About Paul Nwogo
            
Paul Nwogo is an engineer, published author, and the Head Manager at AfriLatest. He has written numerous books available on Amazon covering a diverse range of topics, including health, personal finance, relationships, work ethics, and scam survival. With his technical background and passion for writing, Paul now oversees the editorial direction of AfriLatest, delivering practical, accurate, and engaging content on trending news, music, and global lifestyle topics.
            View all articles by Paul Nwogo