Jim Parsons Reveals He and Husband Todd Spiewak Had Coronavirus: ‘We Lost Our Sense of Smell and Taste’
Jim Parsons is opening up about his experience with the novel coronavirus.
The Boys in the Band star, 47, revealed during Monday’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that he and his husband, Todd Spiewak, had contracted COVID-19 earlier this year.
″Todd and I both had it early on. It was, like, middle of March,″ Parsons recalled to host Jimmy Fallon. ″We didn’t know what it was. We thought we had colds. And then it seemed less likely, and then finally we lost our sense of smell and taste.″
″It defied the descriptions for me. I didn’t realize how completely taste and smell could be gone,″ he continued of his symptoms. ″And when you’re in quarantine and there’s really nothing to do but eat, oh my God, that was brutal.”
Though Parsons couldn’t taste anything at the time, he admitted that he still ″ate everything.″
″I just didn’t taste it. It’s the definition of wasted calories,” he joked.
The loss of taste and smell appears to be an early sign of COVID-19 and was a common symptom among patients in South Korea, China and Italy, according to ENT UK, an organization of ear, nose and throat doctors in the United Kingdom.
Parsons and Spiewak, 43, have since recovered from the coronavirus. The couple, who married in 2017, have been isolating at home together — and even had some fun with bleaching Parsons’ hair during their time in quarantine.
″About six weeks in, and we had been sick, I thought, ‘Screw it!’ ″ Parsons said of dyeing his brown locks to golden blonde. ″Todd did it. It took about six hours and it burned my scalp. But you know what, beauty is pain.″
The Big Bang Theory alum first debuted this new look in May during SiriusXM’s Virtual Town Hall, joking that ″quarantine causes changes″ after showing off his blonde hair.
″I wanted to shake things up for the husband, who only has one companion. Now he’s got sort of one-and-a-half companions,″ Parsons teased. ″You know, a little new thing to jazz it up.”
As of Tuesday, there have more than 7,188,100 COVID-19 cases and 205,200 deaths from coronavirus-related illnesses in the United States, according to aNew York Times database.
