Ross Kemp, a British documentary filmmaker, declined a trip to view the Titanic in an OceanGate submersible for a television broadcast due to safety concerns.
The former EastEnders star, 58, was eager to participate in the trip last year, but it was considered dangerous.
An professional production firm conducted tests and determined that allowing anybody to enter the Titan submarine to examine the shipwreck on the North Atlantic seabed off the coast of Canada would be too unsafe.
Kemp’s agent, InterTalent chairman Professor Jonathan Shalit, stated that they decided not to deploy the OceanGate boat because it was judged risky “on every level.”
‘The production firm, who are highly recognised and famous, looked into the sub and determined it was hazardous on every level and weren’t prepared to use it,’ Professor Shalit told the PA news agency.
‘We were told “it is unsafe, we are not going” – that was a year ago.
‘It is deeply sad for the families who have suffered such a terrible loss.
‘I am relieved that Ross did not participate but I am obviously reassured by the professionalism of those companies we were working with that they didn’t suggest that he go on the submarine.
‘The lesson to be learnt is do your checks thoroughly. By good fortune for us the checks had been done thoroughly.’
A US Coast Guard official said on Thursday that wreckage discovered during the hunt for the submersible Titan, which went missing during a dive to the Titanic disaster, was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”
After the tail cone of the submersible was discovered roughly 1,600ft from the bow of the Titanic debris off the coast of Newfoundland, the US Coast Guard expressed its “deepest sympathies” to the families of the five sailors.
It was claimed that all five people on the submersible, including British millionaire Hamish Harding and Shahzada Dawood, a British-Pakistani businessman, and his son, were presumed to have died.
OceanGate said in a statement: ‘Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.’
On board were British millionaire Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Dawood, his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, the ship’s pilot Stockton Rush, and French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
At a press conference in Boston, Rear Admiral John Mauger said further debris was ‘consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber’.
Kemp had considered filming a documentary to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the Titanic’s loss on her maiden voyage from Southampton in 1912.
Josh Gates, the host of Discovery+’s Expedition Unknown, also claimed that he passed down the opportunity to shoot aboard the Titan submarine.
He stated that he had turned down a filming opportunity in 2021 since the vessel ‘did not function properly’ during a test dive.
He wrote: ‘Ultimately, I walked away from a huge opportunity to film Titanic due to my safety concerns with the OceanGate platform.
‘There’s more to the history and design of Titan that has not been made public — much of it concerning.’
This comes after Titanic filmmaker and submersible specialist James Cameron said he anticipated Titan’s destiny days before the debris from the lost submarine was discovered, and insisted OceanGate were ‘warned’ of a ‘catastrophe’.
‘I felt in my bones what had happened,’ he said.
He explained: ‘I immediately got on the phone to some of my contacts in the deep submersible community. Within about an hour I had the following facts. They were on descent. They were at 3500 metres, heading for the bottom at 3800 metres.
‘Comms were lost and navigation was lost, and I said instantly, you can’t lose comms and navigation together, we’re now at an extreme catastrophic event, a highly energetic catastrophic event. And the first thing that popped to mind was an implosion.’
Cameron continued: ‘This entire week has felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff, and their coastguard is out with airplanes.
‘I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position, and that’s exactly where they found it.’
He added: ‘We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings.’
Cameron went on to tell BBC News that once a remotely controlled underwater vehicle was deployed on Thursday during the search and rescue mission, searchers had ‘found it within hours, probably within minutes’.
He also called the loss of Titan and her crew a “sad irony,” comparing it to the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, which killed over 1,500 people.
‘We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings,’ he continued. ‘OceanGate were warned.’
Cameron also stated that he is aware of a letter sent by others in the deep submergence group, without specifying if it included himself, in which they warned OceanGate that they feared it was “on a path to catastrophe.”
