Stephen Amell revealed that he contracted COVID-19 and is describing the physical and mental aspects of going through the diagnosis.
“I’m a retired superhero, but take one last thing from me,” he said on Michael Rosenbaum‘s Inside of You podcast. “If I’ve had any anxiety, I know that we speak about this sometimes on the pod and, obviously you know, I had a panic attack on your podcast. Take it from a guy whose only sense of anxiety and panic has been the concept of contracting COVID.”
He added that he “never worried about the lethal aspect” of the virus, but, “My anxiety came from the idea that I would be letting hundreds of people down.” Stephen was filming the Starz show Heels at the time of his diagnosis.
“I didn’t have anxiety about the fact that I would give it to other people, which again I possibly did, which is unsettling in and of itself. But you have to understand that because of this anxiety, I have actively, actively, actively tried to avoid contracting this virus. And guess what? I f–king got it anyway, so be smart. If you’re being smart, stay smart. And if you’re not, you’re just dragging this s–t on longer for everybody else.”
“I woke up and it was the strangest thing. My f–king right ear was plugged and I was hot and cold,” he said. His symptoms also included dizziness, loss of appetite, and losing 15 pounds in three weeks.
“…when I got the positive test, for me it became holy f–k. I just destroyed this show because I’m No. 1 on on the call sheet and I work every day more or less… I’m in my head going, ‘S–t, they’re going to have to shut down the production. We’re not yet done with the first block of two episodes. Did I just ruin this?’” he added.
“I’m incredibly fortunate that if I have to go into isolation, I have a job waiting for me on the other side,” he continued. “Again, thank you very much to Starz for being so supportive and what they did over the past three weeks, the show shut down for one day. What they were able to do is mind boggling, quite frankly. It just goes to show that they were prepared for it, but not everyone has the luxury of taking two weeks off. In fact, most people don’t. We are in the midst of a global pandemic and times are tough for a lot of people.”
If you missed it, a few months back, Stephen responded to being called “racist.”
