At almost every award ceremony, the In Memoriam segment manages to leave out at least one notable person every year. And while that mishap also holds at the 95th Oscars, many see the omission of one of the actors as egregious because she was one of the stars of a best picture nominee.
Lenny Kravitz performed “Calling All Angels” during the tribute, which honored filmmakers and creatives who have died over the past year (and was introduced by a teary-eyed John Travolta). Numerous names and faces were featured during the segment, such as Ray Liotta and James Caan, Angela Lansbury, Raquel Welch, Nichelle Nichols, and Jean-Luc Godard.
But missing among those honored was Charlbi Dean, one of the stars of Triangle of Sadness, who suddenly died in August at age 32. Her death, which occurred just a few months after the film’s world premiere at Cannes and shortly before it would arrive in theaters, was due to bacterial sepsis.
Dean might not have worked in the entertainment industry for long, But she was one of the stars of Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund’s biting satire of the ultra-wealthy. Dean, who played the model Yaya, was one of the audience surrogates and faces of the movie.
Given the film was up for three Oscars—Östlund for best director and best original screenplay, and the film for best picture—some fans felt even worse than usual that Dean was left out of the In Memoriam segment. (Triangle of Sadness would eventually walk away empty-handed after Everything Everywhere All At Once won all three categories.)
“Did they really leave out one of the leads of best picture nominee, Triangle of Sadness, Charlbi Dean from the In Memoriam?” @thejstoobs asked
Dean wasn’t the only person omitted from the broadcast: Other actors not included in the segment are Anne Heche, Paul Sorvino, Gilbert Gottfried, and Tom Sizemore. Host Jimmy Kimmel joked about letting people vote to include Robert Blake, who died last week, in the In Memoriam segment after he was acquitted of killing his wife, but he was also ultimately left out.
At the end of the In Memoriam segment, the ceremony produced a QR code that took viewers to an official In Memoriam page on the Oscars website that included even more names and photographs of filmmakers who died over the past year. Many of the names of people omitted from the broadcast, Dean’s included, are listed on the Oscars website.
