Jared Leto will never forget the day he learned about the coronavirus pandemic. After coming off a 12-day silent meditation retreat, he realized the world had forever changed.
“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," he recalled to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.
In the retreat, Leto explained none of the participants were given their phones because it was against the rules.
"There was no talking, of course, no eye contact, no TV. And the teachers [made] a decision: 'Let's not disturb the participants,'" he said.
But once he left the retreat and turned his phone back on, the Suicide Squad actor felt “kind of shocked” to learn about the state of emergency the world was in.
"I drove the whole way trying to be peaceful and zen, keep the feeling going. I got back and I was kind of shocked. It was like Rip Van Winkle," he said. "It was like coming out to the zombie apocalypse.”
In order to keep himself calm, Leto tried to remember what he learned at the retreat. "[I] had this great tool to deal with stress and things in life," he explained. "[But] I don't think anything can quite prepare any [of] us for what we all went through in the beginning."
Leto has been riding out the rest of the coronavirus pandemic in quarantine, and very much keeping up with the news.
Watch his interview with The Tonight Show below.
