Hugh Grant Tells Stephen Colbert About His COVID-19 Bout: “It Started As Just A Very Strange Syndrome”

Actor Hugh Grant is the latest celebrity to reveal contracting the coronavirus.

Speaking remotely Tuesday night during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the 60-year-old Grant said he caught COVID-19 earlier this year. He and his wife, Anna Eberstein, caught the virus in February, Grant said. A recent antibodies test came back showing no signs of the disease.

“It started as just a very strange syndrome where I kept breaking into a terrible sweat. It was like a poncho of sweat, embarrassing really,” Grant told Colbert. “Then my eyeballs felt about three sizes too big and this feeling as though some enormous man was sitting on my chest, sort of Harvey Weinstein or someone.”

He added: “I thought, ‘I don’t know what this is,’ and then I was walking down the street one day and I though, ‘I can’t smell a damn thing,’ and you start to panic.”

Grant is appearing on the new HBO series, The Undoing. The David E. Kelley-created series focuses on a successful therapist, played by Nicole Kidman, whose perfect life unravels thanks to a violent death and subsequent terrible revelations.

To test his COVID-19 case, Grant claims he began “sniffing flowers, then advanced to garbage cans.”

“You know, you want to sniff strangers’ armpits because you just can’t smell anything. I eventually went home and sprayed my wife’s Chanel No. 5 directly into my face. Couldn’t smell a thing, but I did go blind!”