Last Breath’s actors take deep dive into real-life saturation diver’s survival tale

LOS ANGELES – Most people are not familiar with saturation diving, but it might be one of the scariest jobs in the world.

And in 2012, British commercial diver Chris Lemons found himself in a saturation diver’s nightmare when he became stranded 100m underwater with a shrinking air supply.

The incident – and the thrilling race to save him by his two fellow divers and their support crew – is recreated in the survival drama Last Breath, now showing in Singapore cinemas.

Mr Lemons is played by English actor Finn Cole, while American star Woody Harrelson and Canadian actor Simu Liu play his colleagues, Duncan Allcock and Dave Yuasa, respectively.

In a Zoom interview, the actors tell The Straits Times they are in awe of what these men do for a living and how they handled the situation.

Liu, the 35-year-old star of superhero film Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021), says: “If I was ever stuck at the bottom of the sea and I had to pick one person to come rescue me, it would be Dave.”

The movie is directed by Alex Parkinson, a British film-maker who also helmed 2019’s Last Breath, a documentary about the same incident.

Mr Lemons and the two other British commercial divers, Mr Allcock and Mr Yuasa, were repairing essential pipelines and cables at the bottom of the North Sea.

This was a saturation dive, meaning the divers were supposed to spend three to four weeks living in a confined and pressurised environment deep underwater.

Their bodies became saturated with oxygen and helium, allowing them to dive repeatedly and thus work longer without decompressing till the end of the job.

Then, they had to spend several days decompressing or risk a life-threatening case of the bends (decompression sickness).

But while the trio were working, rough weather caused their support vessel on the surface to drift, snapping the cable supplying Mr Lemon with a mixture of oxygen and helium, and causing the then 32-year-old to be swept away with just minutes of air left.

The actors met the divers before they began shooting the movie, and were impressed by their character.

In the film, Mr Yuasa is teased by his colleagues for his emotionless demeanour, but Liu says: “It wasn’t that he’s cold and robotic. It’s that he is a consummate professional and incredibly adept at his job.”

Saturation divers must also be comfortable living at the bottom of the sea and in claustrophobic spaces, away from their loved ones for months on end.

But this is something Mr Yuasa was well suited to, says Liu.

“Something that really struck me about him is he’s not entirely concerned with the way other people view him.

“He’s also somebody who doesn’t mind being alone, and I think those are all very admirable traits,” says the actor, who also appeared in the fantasy comedy Barbie (2023).

And these are the qualities needed in such a crisis, Liu adds.

“Dave is the consummate professional. When push comes to shove, and Chris is on the brink of being detached from his umbilical, Dave’s last words to him are very calming and matter of fact.

“And that’s exactly what you want rather than somebody who would freak out or get emotional.”

Harrelson – who has been Oscar-nominated for his roles in dramas such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) and The People Vs Larry Flynt (1996) – dives for leisure and has run into problems with his air supply before.

“I’ve encountered many life-or-death situations and twice, I was diving with no air.

“The first time it happened to me, I did kind of freak out,” recalls the 63-year-old, who also starred in The Hunger Games science-fiction franchise (2012 to 2015).

“The second, I was much more calm, and my brother was there, so I used his oxygen.”

But as frightening as that was, it pales in comparison to what the divers faced in 2012.

“I like the idea of diving, but I don’t like that kind of diving. I don’t think I’d be up for that,” Harrelson says. “These guys have a very Zen way about them, and I don’t know if I could remain so calm.”