Jamie-Lynn Sigler says her ongoing battle with multiple sclerosis played a decisive role in the end of her late‑2000s romance with Entourage co‑star Jerry Ferrara, a relationship she revisits in frank detail in her new memoir, And So It Is…: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope. The Sopranos alum writes that she and Ferrara, who met while playing on‑screen love interests, dated for just over a year before splitting in 2009, and that the deterioration of her health turned what had been a warm partnership into one defined by caregiver and patient roles.
Sigler recalls that she told Ferrara about her MS — which she was diagnosed with in 2002 but did not make public until 2016 — early in their relationship because intimacy required honesty. “He didn’t even flinch,” she writes. When she asked if he still wanted to be with her, he answered “Yes,” and she describes him as an “anchor” who helped her rediscover joy in acting and eased her anxiety about how others perceived her. Sigler credits him with reminding her of her talent and with showing that someone who loved her “wouldn’t just leave you if you fell apart.”
But the memoir traces how the relationship shifted as her condition worsened. Sigler says she experienced “the worst flare of MS symptoms yet” during their time together and that, by the time they returned to work on Entourage, “the symptoms were getting harder to hide.” She writes that the couple, who rarely fought before, began to bicker as the new dynamic — Ferrara as caretaker, Sigler as patient — placed emotional strain on both of them. In hindsight she says she deliberately provoked arguments to push him away, hoping to spare him from the deep depression she feared was coming: “I found myself picking fights with Jerry just to push him away… I think that I was trying to spare him from what I knew I was about to enter: a deep depression spiral, and I didn’t want to take him with me.”
Related Recipes
Trump’s Beijing Visit Yields Few Breakthroughs as Boeing Deal Falls Short of Expectations
Beth and Rip Kick Off a New Yellowstone Chapter With Dutton Ranch’s Two-Episode May 15 Premiere Across Paramount+ and Paramount Network
Outlander Final Episode Runs 80 Minutes, Debuts on Starz May 15 With 8 PM ET Linear Air
King Charles Joins DJ Set at Buckingham Palace Garden Party for The King’s Trust 50th Anniversary
The book also reveals that the pair considered a future together beyond dating: they looked into buying a house and Sigler says she began imagining marriage and the possibility of starting a family. Despite those plans, the pressure of her illness ultimately became too much for the relationship and the two went their separate ways in 2009. Sigler writes of Ferrara’s goodness in leaving, saying simply, “He was too good for that. He deserved more.”
Since then, both have moved on. Sigler married former professional baseball player Cutter Dykstra — the son of Lenny Dykstra — and they have two sons. Ferrara married Breanne Racano in 2017; the couple recently welcomed their third child earlier this year. Ferrara spoke fondly of working with Sigler in a June 2024 interview with Us Weekly, praising her acting and their on‑screen chemistry, though he did not address the personal relationship in detail.
Trending Now
Steve Kerr inks two-year extension to remain Warriors coach as franchise eyes changes around Steph Curry
Trump’s Beijing Visit Yields Few Breakthroughs as Boeing Deal Falls Short of Expectations
Beth and Rip Kick Off a New Yellowstone Chapter With Dutton Ranch’s Two-Episode May 15 Premiere Across Paramount+ and Paramount Network
Outlander Final Episode Runs 80 Minutes, Debuts on Starz May 15 With 8 PM ET Linear Air
And So It Is…: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope, released this month, frames these episodes as part of a larger narrative about living with MS and finding acceptance. Sigler uses the memoir to unpack the highs and lows of that period — the intimacy and the tenderness as well as the strain and eventual split — offering new personal context to a relationship that began under the bright lights of cable television and faltered under the weight of illness.
Continue Reading
