Rita Wilson Talks Recovering From Coronavirus

She's got the controversial drug chloroquine, but isn't sure it worked.

Rita Wilson stopped by CBS This Morning on Tuesday (April 14) to describe what it felt like when she and husband Tom Hanks tested positive more than a month ago for COVID-19, and how the potential treatment made her feel even worse.

“I was very tired, I felt extremely achy, uncomfortable, didn’t want to be touched and then the fever started,” said Wilson in her first televised interview since the diagnosis.

She also had “chills like I’ve never had before” to go with a nearly 102 degree fever and told co-host Gayle King she now realizes she also lost her senes of taste and smell. Wilson also discussed being treated with the controversial anti-malaria drug chloroquine, which has been repeatedly and enthusiastically touted by Pres. Trump, though the science on whether it is helpful for those suffering from the novel coronavirus is far from settled.

“I don’t know if the drug worked or it was just time for the fever to break,” said Wilson, noting that there were a number of “extreme” side effects, including severe nausea, weak muscles and vertigo. “I think people have to be very considerate about that drug. We don’t really know if it’s helpful in this case.”

Hanks — who Wilson said didn’t spike as high a fever and didn’t lose his senses of smell and taste — made his return on Saturday night when he hosted a special quarantine edition of Saturday Night Live, during which he performed the opening monologue from the couple’s home.

Wilson and Hanks aren’t sure how they got the virus, but they’ve been told it was from someone they were both exposed to at the same time, though they don’t know when or where that was. Luckily, she said, no one in their family or close associates have contracted COVID-19 to date. The couple have participated in a study to see if they have developed immunity and to see if they can donate plasma to help others who have tested positive.

As for the viral video of her rapping Naughty By Nature‘s “Hip Hop Hooray” that blew up while Wilson was recovering, she said it took her a month to learn it for a role in the 2019 movie Boy Genius. She described the process of getting the lyrics down as not unlike learning a foreign language, complete with many trips to Urban Dictionary to find out just what she was rapping about. But what started as a “brain exercise” during quarantine has now turned into a remix with the group that will benefit the MusiCares Foundation COVID-19 Relief Fund.

Watch Wilson on CBS This Morning below.