The wife of actor Tom Hanks struggles with lingering effects of the virus, more than a couple of years after she and her spouse contracted the illness at the start of pandemic.
- Oct 2, 2022
AceShowbiz - Rita Wilson is left with a "persistent cough," more than two years after being hit with COVID-19. Although still feeling the effects of the illness, the 65-year-old singer-and-actress - who was the first famous face along with her husband Tom Hanks to come forward and reveal they had contracted the virus in the early days of the pandemic in March 2020 - feels "very lucky" that things aren't worse.
"It was. Unfortunately. I still have a persistent cough from that. It's particularly worse at night. You just deal with it. I still feel very lucky, it could have been so much worse," the "Asteroid City" star said when asked if her breathing and therefore her singing had been affected by the virus. "[Ultimately] it's not horrible. It's not like I'm worried about it."
In 2015, Rita was diagnosed with breast cancer and she warned her spouse - the father of her sons Chet, 32, and 26-year-old Truman - that she wanted him to be sad "for a very, very, very, very long time" if she passed away, but also urged him to throw a party to celebrate her life if the worst happened.
She said, "The conversation I had was, 'OK, look - if something happens and I should go before you, then I really want two things to happen.' I said to Tom, 'I want you to be sad for a very, very, very, very long time.' And the second thing was, 'I want you to throw me a party.' Because I believe in the celebration of life in that way."
The "Mamma Mia!" actress underwent a double mastectomy and returned to work in Broadway production "Fish in the Dark" opposite Larry David just a month later and, though she was "exhausted", she's thankful she forced herself to go back to the show.
She told Telegraph magazine, "I was determined to prove that life is going to be normal - so I'm gonna have my surgery and then I'm gonna go back to work, in a month. Which I did."
"Looking back on it, it was exhausting. I did it, but it was basically all I could do - I'd just sleep all day, get up, go do the play, come back, sleep all night. But I'm really thankful I finished out the run. If I commit to something, I do it. I've never been a quitter. But it was definitely challenging."
Rita was very upset when Olivia Newton-John died earlier this year following a long battle with breast cancer. She said, "Everybody loved Olivia Newton-John, for many, many reasons, and I was lucky enough to have known her a little bit."
"She was a beacon for a lot of us breast cancer survivors. Because she just kept going, she kept surviving. It would come back, she would beat it, she would get through it. To me that was incredibly courageous, that she was so open about her struggle. That's very hard to do."
