A STAR IS TORN
Actor forever changed by serious on-set injury
Actor Dylan O’Brien had mixed emotions as he watched the finished version of his new Maze Runner movie after the production was shut down for almost a year to allow him to recover from a stunt injury.
The 26-year-old was badly injured when a stunt went wrong while he was filming Maze Runner: The Death Cure in Vancouver in 2016.
O’Brien has never gone into detail about the stunt, but he tells the U.K.-based Press Association his recovery left him in a “fragile personal state.”
Now, with the release of the final Maze Runner movie, he admits he’s proud of the film, because it reminds him of what he had to go through to get healthy.
“When I saw the movie, it was an emotional thing,” he says, “but it felt good, you know? I just felt really happy and peaceful. It is kind of a trip for me to watch though.
“It does give me a whirlwind of emotions, but at the end of the day, they’re happy.”
O’Brien admits his accident on set has made him super aware of safety: “It will change forever how I approach those things, it’s changed it drastically, and I think it should spark more of a conversation, to be honest.
“People have lost their lives on set, even since, so safety should be absolutely paramount on a set. It needs to be a constant reminder that you’re not in a completely safe place, and things can happen. You’re dealing with major, major set pieces and pieces of machinery and sometimes you go in at high speeds and things can go wrong, and it just gets easy to fall into a negligent, make-believe kind of fun vibe that the set is ... but you have to be taking these things incredibly seriously and that can and should never happen.”
O’Brien’s co-star Kaya Scodelario says she and the rest of the cast will always be tremendously proud of him.
“It was a huge thing that he went through and he’s incredibly brave to want to revisit those moments and those scenes and to get the job done, and we’re just really proud of our friend for being that brave,” she said.