Jared Leto Recalls the “Shocking” Experience of Emerging From a Silent Retreat Into the COVID World

Well, that’s one way to learn about the novel coronavirus. During an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night, Jared Leto recalled the surreal experience of emerging from a 12-day silent retreat to a world that had been entirely shut down by COVID-19. “It was like coming out to the zombie apocalypse,” Leto told Fallon. “It was shocking.”

Leto has been open about the bizarre experience in the past — “Walked out yesterday into a very different world,” the Oscar winner tweeted in March — but host Jimmy Fallon couldn’t stop himself from asking about it during their Monday night interview. “I couldn’t imagine this happening to me, or to anyone,” said Fallon. “But you didn’t even know that everything had been shut down. You were on a retreat. Is this true?”

“Absolutely true, yeah,” replied Leto. He explained that he was one a “two-week silent meditation” that required him to get rid of his phone and any other distractions, so he had no idea that the COVID-19 case count in the United States was increasing exponentially. “Just in that short amount of time, when I came out it was a shutdown, a state of emergency, the whole world had changed,” said Leto. “But when we were in there, they didn’t tell us. We didn’t have our phones, there was no talking, of course, no eye contact, no TV. And the teachers, they made a decision: ‘Let’s not disturb the participants.'”

The Suicide Squad star added that he “didn’t turn on [his] phone until [he] went back to LA,” so he actually had a “peaceful” drive back from the retreat. Of course, that didn’t last long. “I got back and I was kind of shocked. It was like Rip Van Winkle,” he said, a reference to Washington Irving’s short story about a man who falls asleep for 20 years and wakes up in a post-Revolutionary America.

“I had this great tool to deal with ‘stress’ and things in life,” continued Leto, “But I don’t think anything can quite prepare any of us for what we all went through in the beginning.” Even 10 months later, that couldn’t be more true.

Watch Jared Leto recount his “shocking” introduction to a COVID-affected world above.

Where to stream The Tonight Show