False claims about Covid-19 ‘crisis actor’ recirculate on Facebook

A video recirculating on Facebook claims a man filmed by the BBC in hospital with Covid-19 is actually an actor pretending to be ill.

This isn’t true. The man in question was genuinely hospitalised with Covid-19, and later said he was a “crisis actor” on social media as a joke.

The video shows a TV playing BBC News footage of a man named Henry Dyne lying in a hospital bed. The person recording then pulls up Mr Dyne’s Instagram profile on his phone, which he says includes the description: “award winning crisis actor”, and says: “It’s almost like he’s been paid to pretend he’s got Covid and he’s on the telly… He’s pretending to be real… He’s a crisis actor.”

In fact, Mr Dyne has previously confirmed to both Reuters and the BBC that he was genuinely ill with Covid-19 when he appeared on BBC News in 2021, and that he had added the phrase “1x Academy Award Winning Crisis Actor” to his Instagram bio as a joke after receiving abusive messages calling him a crisis actor after his interview first aired.

We wrote about this claim back in 2022, and have fact checked various other false claims about people supposedly pretending to be involved in crisis situations.

The idea that people pretend to experience types of crisis or disasters outside dramatised or training situations—so-called crisis actors—is a common feature of conspiracy theories.