Sophia Michaels
In this time of crisis we apparently have look to celebrities to teach us how to properly wash our hands and ensure social distancing, and now the cast of Contagion has joined the fight against COVID-19.
The cast of the 2011 film, including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle, star in a series of PSA videos created in partnership with scientists from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The videos, part of the #ControltheContagion effort, were self-filmed in the actors’ home with guidance from the film’s director Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns.
In the videos, Damon explains social distancing while Winslet showcases the best hand washing practice. “We can all do this together, just by staying apart,” Damon says. “Please do your part. Other generations have been asked to do extraordinary things. We’re being asked to just stay at home. We got this.”
The campaign was created to combat “misleading, inaccurate messages and advice about the COVID-19 pandemic” which are being “shared across both traditional and social media platforms.” The PSAs were written under the guidance of the same experts who worked on the film Contagion, including Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, Dr. Larry Brilliant, Laurie Garrett and Mark Smolinski, as well as Dr. Stephen Morse.
Contagion has come back into the pop culture zeitgeist since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. “It’s a disaster movie, but it’s also a pandemic procedural, one devoted to charting the how, when, where, why — and most important, what happens next,” Rolling Stone‘s David Fear wrote of the movie earlier this month, calling “the single most urgent movie of the moment.”
Featured via: Rollingstone
