Rita Wilson has spoken about her painful coronavirus experience, saying she suffered brain fog for weeks after she was diagnosed with husband Tom Hanks.
The singer and producer, 63, told Steve Wright on BBC Radio 2 she tried to test her memory by reciting the lyrics for Naughty by Nature’s Hip Hop Hooray during recovery, a song she had to learn for film Boy Genius last year.
To Rita’s surprise she remembered most of the rap and she has now teamed up with Naughty by Nature to release it as a charity single to raise funds for the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund.
Recovered: Rita Wilson said coronavirus was ‘not a pleasant experience’ and left her with ‘brain fog’ for weeks
The mother-of-two said of her coronavirus experience: ‘We were down in Australia when we were diagnosed and it was quite scary because we didn’t now the direction that it was going to take.
‘I had slightly more severe symptoms than my husband, so you know, I’m very thankful that we’re through it now, but it was not a pleasant experience.’
Rita said it originally took her a month to learn the lyrics of Hip Hop Hooray which was ‘like Shakespeare without the iambic pentameter’.
‘Fatigued’: Tom Hanks said wife Rita had a more horrid time with the virus after they were diagnosed in Australia
Viral success: Last week, the rap trio Naughty by Nature released a remix of their 1992 hit Hip Hop Hooray featuring Wilson on vocals to benefit the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund
Wanting to test her memory during recovery from coronavirus, Rita tried to recite the lyrics again to the 1993 rap song.
She said: ‘I was in quarantine, had begun to recover from the coronavirus, was still a little in a brain fog, and I wanted to still remembered Hip Hop Hooray, so I played it, and realised that I did know almost most of it.
‘I thought maybe I could post this on my Instagram and it would be a way of making people smile because it was so random, and also to let people know that I was doing okay.’
The actress ended up getting in touch with hip hop group Naughty by Nature and they teamed up to release the charity single.
Rita’s husband Tom recently spoke about the couple’s tortuous time after they were diagnosed with the deadly virus when they were in Queensland.
‘I couldn’t even get halfway through’: The 63-year-old father-of-four ‘had some body aches and was very fatigued’ to the point that he ‘wiped’ out 12 minutes into a 30-minute basic work-out
The 63-year-old father-of-four said he ‘had some body aches and was very fatigued’ to the point that he ‘wiped’ out 12 minutes into a 30-minute basic work-out.
‘I just tried to do basic stretches and exercises on the floor and I couldn’t even get halfway through,’ Tom recalled to The National Defense Radio Show.
When a nurse checked on Hanks inside his air-pressurized isolated room, he said: ‘She looked at me through her glasses like she was talking to the dumbest human being. And she said, “You have COVID-19.”‘
The Toy Story 4 star said wife Rita suffered far worse from 102F fevers, chills, as well as nausea.
Back home: The couple returned to the US after being struck down in Australia on March 27 (pictured)
‘She was so nauseous, she had to crawl on the floor from the bed to the facilities. It lasted a while,’ Tom explained.
‘Rita went through a tougher time than I did. She had a much-higher fever and she had some other symptoms. She lost her sense of taste and smell. She got absolutely no joy from food for a better part of three weeks.’
Hanks and Wilson – who announced their diagnosis on March 12 – will celebrate their 22nd wedding anniversary on April 30.
Since returning to Los Angeles, the A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood actor remotely hosted NBC’s first-ever Saturday Night Live at Home on April 11.
Sony Pictures postponed the June 12 release of Tom’s WWII movie Greyhound co-starring Elisabeth Shue ‘indefinitely’ on March 30.
The healing power of laughter: Since returning to Los Angeles, Hanks remotely hosted NBC’s first-ever Saturday Night Live at Home on April 11