Jared Leto likens COVID-19 pandemic to 'zombie apocalypse'

Jared Leto told Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday that he was oblivious about the COVID-19 pandemic at first because he was away on a retreat when it started.

The "30 Seconds to Mars" frontman admitted on "The Tonight Show" that he had no idea that the world was in the middle of a pandemic until two weeks into quarantine. He said he had been away on a two-week "silent meditation" retreat when the lockdown first happened in March of last year.

"You didn't even know that everything had been shut down. You were on a retreat. Is this true?" Fallon asked.

"Absolutely true, yeah...The idea is that you go away, you get rid of your phone. You get rid of distractions. You get rid of everything and you just meditate," Leto explained and expressed his disbelief that while he was away there were already about 150 cases.

"Just in that short amount of time, when I came out, it was shut down. A state of emergency and the whole world had changed. But when we were in there, they didn't tell us," he shared.

The "Dallas Buyers Club" star said that those in the retreat had no way of knowing about the pandemic. They did not have their phones and "there was no talking, of course." There was also "no eye-contact, no TV."

"The teachers really, they made a decision. 'Let's not disturb the participants.' And I didn't turn on my phone until I went back to L.A.," he explained.

"So I drove the whole way trying to be, like peaceful and zen. Keep the feeling going. And I got back and I was kind of shocked. It was like Rip Van Winkle," the 49-year-old "The Little Things" star shared.

Fallon added that it was like a "Twilight Zone" episode, but in real life to which Leto agreed and called it "shocking." He acknowledged that nothing could have prepared people for the COVID-19 pandemic when it began. Even he himself found his "great tool" in dealing with stress futile. He said going back to Los Angeles from his silent retreat was "like coming out to the zombie apocalypse."