Jared Leto Remembers Leaving Silent Retreat to Discover World Gripped by Pandemic

 

By Zoe Papadakis

While Jared Leto was spending time at a silent retreat last March, he was blissfully unaware that the world was in the grips of a pandemic. After completing the retreat, he found himself thrown into a global crisis that had forced countries into lockdown. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon Monday during an appearance on "The Tonight Show," Leto revealed that it was like "coming out to the zombie apocalypse."

"When I went away, there were about 150 cases," Leto recalled, according to HuffPost. "Just in that short amount of time, when I came out there was a shutdown, a state of emergency, and the whole world had changed. But when we were in there, they didn't tell us."

Leto explained that guests were unaware of how fast the coronavirus was spreading because they were prohibited from talking or taking cellphones and TVs into the retreat. It was a shock to discover what was going on in the outside world after reemerging from the retreat.

"I didn’t turn on my phone until I went back to LA, so I drove the whole way, you know, trying to be like peaceful and zen, keep the feeling going," Leto explained. "I got back and I was kind of shocked. It was like 'Rip Van Winkle.'"

The actor said that, although he had spent time learning to cope with anxiety, nothing could have prepared him for what was to come.

"I had this great tool to deal with 'stress' and things in life, but I don't think anything can quite prepare any of us for what we all went through at the beginning," he said.

Leto was not the only person who was unaware that the coronavirus was sweeping across the globe. Contestants participating "Big Brother" were also in the dark. While more and more people were falling ill, 14 men and women isolated in a house in Cologne, Germany, had no idea what was going on outside, The Guardian reported. They only learned about the pandemic weeks later.