All SAG-AFTRA members have been impacted in some way by the coronavirus pandemic. Many are experiencing economic hardships after work disappeared overnight when productions around the globe shut down.
But for members who have been infected with the coronavirus, the pandemic has hit particularly close to home.
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson were among the first SAG-AFTRA members to publicly state they contracted COVID-19. The couple turned their recovery experience into a chance to spread a positive message.
“We are all in this together. Flatten the curve,” Tom Hanks wrote on Instagram, a week after going into self-quarantine when he was diagnosed in March while filming in Australia. Hanks said it took two weeks to feel better.
Hanks and Wilson returned to Los Angeles and he went on to host Saturday Night Live from his home on April 11.
Broadcast member and Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos tested positive but remained asymptomatic after caring for his wife, member Ali Wentworth, during her own recovery from the virus.
“It’s very ‘morphy,’” Debi Mazar wrote on Instagram about her bout with COVID-19. “One day I feel crappy and the next I’m normal. Today my lungs are heavy, but I’m tough. I can breathe, and I’m going to heal here, in my own home!”
Recording artist member Pink recovered from the virus and pledged to donate $1 million to healthcare professionals on the frontline.
Tragically, some members have succumbed to the disease.
Among them, Mark Blum, a former SAG-AFTRA board member from New York who served from 2007–2013; actors Julie Bennett, Allen Garfield and Rick May; performer Roy Horn; and recording artists Joe Diffie, John Prine, Alan Merrill and Adam Schlesinger.
This item originally featured in the SAG-AFTRA magazine spring 2020 issue.