Claire Foy is Ready to Talk About Her Parasites

Celebrities don’t really open up on talk-shows anymore. They tell cute anecdotes, tolerate Jimmy Fallon’s jokes, and eat obscenely hot chicken wings while wondering where their life has gone awry. These days, they usually only get candid about something if they can use it to promote a side-hustle or make some sponcon cash. But once in a blue moon, you get someone who will just say with their full chest that they had parasites for five years and had to quit caffeine because of it. Bless you, Claire Foy, for keeping us in the clicks business.

Foy, best known for the first two seasons of The Crown, is currently promoting her new film H is for Hawk. She appeared on the podcast Table Manners, hosted by singer Jessie Ware and her mother Lennie. Guests get a home-cooked meal and then they chat. It’s a fun show. I recommend it. Foy felt comfortable enough to let out a big secret. “I feel like I’m in The Traitors or something, and I’m letting everyone know that I’m related to someone,” she joked.

“I kept losing weight and I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. When asked how long she thought she had the parasites for, Foy said, “At least five years,” explaining that she believed she contracted the bug while in Morocco. Yikes. This is legit my worst nightmare. This is pure Cronenbergian sh*t that haunts my waking hours. You know how when you were a kid you were constantly afraid you’d fall into quicksand? This is like that, but worse! For Foy, who already suffered from a separate autoimmune condition, she says changing her diet helped (but, as the BBC notes, “there is no evidence that parasite cleanses including dietary changes and cutting out caffeine can cure parasitic infections.”

So, thanks, Claire, for the warning, and for reminding me of the importance of cooking your meat properly. When I said I wanted celebrities to be less boring in interviews, this isn’t what I had in mind but hey, cursed monkey paw deals and all that.