Actor Dylan O'Brien wishes that the Maze Runner production crew would've listened when he raised concerns about on-set safety measures.
To promote his new flick, Saturday Night, O'Brien had an interview with Men's Health, which was published on Oct. 7. During the chat, he reflected on the "life-changing incident" while filming Maze Runner: The Death Cure in 2016, during which he sustained severe injuries that resulted in a concussion, facial fracture, and brain trauma. The accident occurred when O'Brien was unexpectedly pulled off the top of a moving vehicle while wearing a harness and collided into another vehicle. But O'Brien flagged worries about on-set safety before the incident happened.
"I’ve approached everything differently, you could say, particularly with regard to standing my ground on set," O'Brien said about how the incident changed him. "It’s very commonplace in the culture for young actors to be controlled, and the way they strive to do that is by always being like, 'Oh, don’t become difficult. Don’t be a pain in the ass. Or are you complaining, are you being difficult?' Things like that."
While production on the sci-fi thriller was temporarily paused for several weeks, with the film later releasing in 2018, O'Brien learned that it's necessary to speak up, even when young actors are wrongly being considered "difficult."
"Don’t let them manipulate you into thinking that is being difficult, because I can look at that day and know I was a 24-year-old kid who was raising concerns about how we were approaching things, and they were not listened to, they were not respected. And then what happened, happened,” O’Brien continued. "And by all accounts, it was all pretty gotten away with, I would say, as well."
On production sets, he's since avowed to "have your own back, and that’s the most you can rely on."
"I just turned 33. I’ve been doing this for 15 years, he said. "I know the person I am, and the character I bring to set, and the way I treat people and the way that I treat a workspace, and I know I’m not difficult. I know I’m not an asshole. I know I was trying to protect myself that day, and so I’ve just never forgotten that. That’s always rung true as being the thing to hold with me."
According to a 2017 Vulture profile, O'Brien revealed that he reconsidered his acting career shortly after the Maze Runner accident.
"I really was in a dark place there for a while and it wasn’t an easy journey back," he said. "There was a time there where I didn’t know if I would ever do it again … and that thought scared me, too."
O'Brien called his recovery period "overwhelming" and that he was even "pressured" to prematurely return to set.
"And then there was a part of me, too, that was feeling pressured and stressed out by the mere fact that I had all of these people still emailing me, checking in,” he continued. "I would get so fucking mad. Like if ever I heard from a producer [who was] seeing when I’d be able to get back on set, I’d fucking go nuts. It would really, really piss me off."