When the coronavirus pandemic began in March, Justin Hartley made a vow to himself to stay fit while quarantined at home. However, things quickly went awry.
“I thought, ‘Well, I’ll enjoy my home. And instead of being lazy, I’ll just work out and read. And I’ll learn an instrument and a foreign language.’ And, um, yeah, I didn’t do any of those things,” the This Is Us star, 43, said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Tuesday, October 27. “So, I was working out, and I ended up doing something really kind of ridiculous. … I tore my bicep off my arm. Yeah, it was nasty.”
Hartley explained that he injured “the tendon that holds it to the bone” while doing a bicep curl, and it “sounded like someone just ripped your shirt.” As for the pain, he recalled, “I felt, like, a little grain of sand and then it turned into a pea and then a marble and then a golf ball and then a tennis ball and then a softball and then a watermelon. It just kept feeling like it was huge, like a human head was in there.”
The actor assured Ellen DeGeneres that he was “totally healed” after undergoing surgery, which he recalled in great detail to the admittedly squeamish talk show host.
“It took, like, three months [to heal]. I’m, like, 95 percent right now, I would say,” he added. “It’s a little tight. But I’m all right. I’m lifting weights again and everything, so it’s fine.”
The Young and the Restless alum was spotted wearing an arm sling and a cast in June while going for a shirtless walk outside his home in Los Angeles. He never publicly commented on the reason until Tuesday’s interview.
The injury is not the only pain that Hartley has felt in recent months. In November 2019, he filed for divorce from his now-estranged wife, Chrishell Stause, after two years of marriage.
“Justin’s friends are glad that Chrishell is no longer in his life and that he can move on,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly in August. “He is doing well right now, and while it’s been disappointing that he is being dragged into story lines on [her show Selling Sunset], he knew that he should expect this.”
The Emmy nominee, who was previously married to his Passions costar Lindsay Korman from 2004 to 2012, has since moved on with his former Young and the Restless castmate Sofia Pernas. Us broke the news of their romance in May.
