Idris: Covid was pretty traumatic ...I’m very lucky
CORONAVIRUS:
LUTHER star Idris Elba says catching coronavirus was “traumatic” – and he feels lucky to be alive.
The 47-year-old actor and his wife Sabrina Dhowre Elba, 30, tested positive in March.
He released a video on social media to reveal their diagnoses – and became one of the first highprofile people to say they had the deadly disease.
The couple suffered just a mild strain of Covid-19 and are fully recovered but Idris told Radio Times he is “lucky to be alive and thankful for being able to kick” the virus.
He said: “I was asymptomatic so I didn’t get the major symptoms.
“Mentally it hit me very bad, because a lot was unknown.
“I felt compelled to speak about it because it was such an unknown.
“So the mental impact of that on both myself and my wife was pretty traumatic.”
Idris, who has two children from previous relationships, was selfisolating with Sabrina in New Mexico when he released the social media video.
More recently he has signed an open letter to the UK Film and TV Industry which asks for better representation of BAME (black,Asian and minority ethnic) people in the creative industries.
In total 4,300 people were signatories, including actress and screenwriter Michaela Coel, TV presenter Sandi Toksvig and actor Bill Nighy.
It was written in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the 46-yearold African-American who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May.
The horrifying incident sparked an uprising of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The letter to British TV and film chiefs says: “We require your active engagement to tackle structural and