A producer for The Last Man on Earth recalls that Tom Hanks was the first victim of the show’s fictional plague, long before the actor got coronavirus for real. Now certified as a pandemic, the coronavirus outbreak hit the entertainment world in a huge way when superstar Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson both reported they had tested positive for the virus while in Australia.
Hanks and Wilson, who have been Down Under while Hanks works on Baz Luhrmann’s musical biopic Elvis, went into isolation due to the positive test and were later reported by son Colin Hanks to be in high spirits. While most around the world have been worried sick about Hanks and Wilson’s situation, at least one satiric Aussie news outlet was able to make something positive (for themselves) out of the matter by crafting a fake story saying Hanks had been given a Wilson volleyball straight out of Cast Away to keep him company in quarantine. The volleyball story was passed around the internet as real before finally being exposed as a fake that used an old picture of Hanks.
The latest bit of levity concerning Hanks and Wilson’s very serious coronavirus situation comes from The Last Man on Earth producer Jonathan Gabay, who took to Twitter to recall a wild coincidence involving the show and Hanks. On the series, a mystery disease wipes out most life on earth in 2020, leaving Will Forte’s character as the titular “last man on earth” (until he very soon encounters other people). On the show, Hanks was actually the first person to die of the disease, as Gabay was reminded. See his tweet in the space below:
Of course, in reality Hanks thankfully has not died, and the coronavirus pandemic is nowhere near wiping out all human life as in The Last Man on Earth. However, given the seriousness of the current situation, it’s not a surprise to see people referring back to apocalyptic pop culture like the now-canceled FOX show in the name of grim humor. Indeed, another of the show’s producers, Christopher Miller, also made half-joking reference to how the series “predicted” the coronavirus outbreak. Another frequently referenced work since coronavirus became the dominant worldwide story is Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, which has become a very popular streaming option in recent weeks.
If indeed The Last Man on Earth is a prophetic work, then Hanks and most everyone else in the world is headed for a terrible fate indeed. Thankfully, pop culture is not actually predictive, but only seems that way sometimes as real life occasionally aligns roughly with past fictional works. Even The Simpsons, which has frequently been cited as a prophetic show due its many eerie Simpsons predicts coincidences, isn't really a storehouse of mystical knowledge but only seems like one thanks to the laws of mathematical probability.
Source: Jonathan Gabay/Twitter