Rita Wilson still has a "persistent cough", more than two years after contracting COVID-19.
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had COVID-19 in March 2020
The 65-year-old singer-and-actress and her husband Tom Hanks were the first famous faces to come forward and reveal they had contracted the virus in the early days of the pandemic in March 2020 and though the 'Asteroid City' star is still feeling the effects of the illness, she feels "very lucky" that things aren't worse.
Asked if her breathing and therefore her singing had been affected by the virus, she said: "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.
"[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."
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