‘It took me a while to comprehend it’: Harris Dickinson on the death of his Triangle of Sadness co-star Charlbi Dean

‘Everyone on the film is really broken by it,’ said actor

Harris Dickinson has opened up about the tragic death of hisTriangle of Sadness co-star Charlbi Dean.

The 32-year-old South African actor died in August of an “unexpected sudden illness”, three months after Triangle of Sadness won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and received an eight-minute standing ovation.

She and Dickinson star in the wealth satire as fashion models who become stranded on an island after a luxury cruise goes wrong.

Speaking in a new interview with The Observer, Dickinson, 26, said: “We were in it together. We were in the mud together throughout the whole thing. So hearing that news was shocking and terrible. It took me a while to comprehend it.

“Everyone on the film is really broken by it, but I just feel like the performance that she gave and the body of work that is now there, representing Charlbi and for us to remember her by, is something that her family should be so proud of.”

He added: “There’s often a thing with the film industry that it’s untouchable, that everything’s guaranteed to just be fine and go on. But the fragility of life is a real thing.”

In the aftermath of Dean’s death, there was speculation on social media that she had had an adverse reaction to the Covid-19 vaccination. However, her brother quickly clarified that she’d had a lung infection that may have been complicated by the removal of her spleen after a car accident she was in as a teenager.

Charlbi Dean (Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

The film, which is the first English-language movie by director Ruben Östlund, also stars Woody Harrelson as the captain of the luxury yacht.

Swedish director Östlund has won the Palme d’Or before, in 2017, for The Square starring Claes Bang, Dominic West, and Elisabeth Moss.

It will be released in UK cinemas on 28 October.