A decade ago, Jude Law was warned about a pandemic, like the one we’re now experiencing, when he was filming Contagion, an eerily prescient story about a deadly flu virus. This year the movie became one of the most-rented ones — but the actor thinks that’s “odd.”
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Law was asked about the fact that so many people have been turning to Contagion amid the coronavirus pandemic, while in conversation with Jimmy Fallon, and he gave his take on it.
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“I found it a little odd that everyone went back to watch that in the middle of the real thing,” he told the talk show host. “You [can] just turn on the news, you don’t need to watch it.”
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At the same time, Law says he “wrote immediately to [director Steven] Soderbergh and just said, ‘You got it. You were there 10 years ago.'”
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Law was also fully prepped for a pandemic like COVID-19 10 years ago. “If I’m honest… one of the most affecting memories or experiences on that film were the doctors and virologists who were advising us,” he said.
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“They were all saying to us, ‘This is a matter of when, not if’.”
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He picked up tips like the ones that have now become commonplace advice: “I remember leaving the whole experience thinking you touch yourself on your face 10,000 times a day. We don’t wash our hands — all of that stuff was sort of embedded in me. But, of course, it slowly percolates away… Here we are in it.”
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As for the film, “It was very deliberately designed to be a cautionary film,” producer Michael Shamberg told BuzzFeed News earlier this year, adding, “We got the science right.”
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