Tom Hanks Is Headed Back to Australia Where He Contracted Coronavirus in March

Alyssa Hardy
·3 min read

Rita Wilson Shared Her COVID-19 Experience With Gayle King

It was Wilson's first interview since her diagnosis.

Tom Hanks is headed back to Australia, six months after he initially contracted coronavirus while filming an Elvis Presley biopic in the country, Just Jared reports. In March, the actor and his wife, Rita Wilson, announced that they had tested positive for the virus and were quarantined in the country while they got better.

Throughout the last several months, they shared details about the illness and used their experience to raise awareness. In the beginning, many felt that a beloved actor like Hanks would be the catalyst toward making people take it more seriously.

"Rita had a much tougher time than I did," Hanks told The Hollywood Reporter after returning to Los Angeles in April. "She had a much higher fever. She had lost her sense of taste and sense of smell. I had some bad body aches and fatigue."

View this post on Instagram

Hello folks. @ritawilson and I want to thank everyone here Down Under who are taking such good care of us. We have Covid-19 and are in isolation so we do not spread it to anyone else. There are those for whom it could lead to a very serious illness. We are taking it one-day-at-a-time. There are things we can all do to get through this by following the advice of experts and taking care of ourselves and each other, no? Remember, despite all the current events, there is no crying in baseball. Hanx

A post shared by Tom Hanks (@tomhanks) on Mar 12, 2020 at 7:08pm PDT

Wilson and Hanks also donated their plasma to aid in the research for a vaccine. "We have not only been approached, we have said, 'Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?' And, in fact, we will be giving it now to the places that hope to work on what I would like to call the Hank-ccine," Hanks admitted on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!.

RELATED: Tom Hanks Details His Coronavirus Treatment in Australia

Since March, Hollywood has been on pause, with most productions shutting down for the entire summer. In the last few weeks, despite continually rising infections, several U.S. productions have started back up. Australia has had a significantly lower rate of infection but there are still reported cases.

The film's director Baz Luhrmann assured fans, however, that they would be taking every precaution. "I cannot emphasize enough how lucky we feel in the current climate that the state of Queensland, and Queenslanders in general, have been so supportive of this film. We thank our partners in the Queensland Government and Queensland Health for their extremely diligent process so that we can be an example of how creativity and productivity can proceed safely and responsibly in a way that protects our team and the community at large. We are all excited to start working with Tom Hanks when he is out of quarantine in two weeks.”