DAREDEVIL documentary maker Ross Kemp revealed he was keen to dive on the doomed OceanGate submersible before his team pulled out of the expedition last minute.
The ex-EastEnder star was on ITV's This Morning today where he claimed he was invited to be a part of a Titan voyage this summer.
Kemp told hosts Holly Willoughby and Craig Doyle he was planning to make a documentary to mark the 110th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
The BAFTA award-winning showman later confirmed the OceanGate team then invited him to descend to the wreck site on their deep-sea vessel.
He said: "I just think you know in any one time there are different documentaries that one could be making and that is true – I was invited to have dialogue with the company in order for me to go down this summer.
"But it was decided by the people, not me, that it was not the right thing to do."
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Only a few months later, five men on board the missing Titan sub died instantly when the vessel suffered a "catastrophic" implosion.
Stockton Rush, Brit billionaire Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman were "sadly lost" during the June 2023 voyage.
Despite the haunting hindsight, Kemp said at the time he was keen to go on the expedition.
He said: "Of course I wanted too.
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"I love diving, I am a HSE qualified diver and I am fascinated by the sea and fascinated by wrecks.
"However, right now all we care about are the families."
The TV hardman was pushed on his production team's apprehension to send him down but he responded "honestly, it was not my decision".
He added: "I am not expert enough to know whether that was the right sub or not."
It comes as the expert production company behind it quickly decided it was unsafe for anybody to go on the vessel after reportedly doing its own checks.
Kemp's agent, InterTalent boss Professor Jonathan Shalit, said: "Their team checked out this OceanGate submersible and pulled out of using it, as it was simply not considered safe or fit for purpose.
"They found other sub dives, which have been safe and successful, but by that point Ross was so busy with all his TV shows that he was unable to commit the time.
"I am just relieved not to have had my post note in history as the agent who killed Ross Kemp."
The star has dived without submersibles on two shows for Sky History — Shipwreck Treasure Hunter and Deep Sea Treasure Hunter — which have both aired.
They were relatively less dangerous, but still saw him caught in a few hairy moments as he explored various shipwrecks.
One moment saw him black out after inhaling too much carbon dioxide.
A TV insider said: "Ross had to get a deep sea diving certificate so he could dive at up to 40 metres, which requires a lot of teaching and learning.
"But when provisional enquiries were made with OceanGate, the question was asked: ‘How much training does he need to go down in the submersible to the Titanic?’ And the answer was: ‘None at all’.
"The company was looked at initially because they were a well-known organisation, but after Atlantic started asking questions, any plans quickly unravelled."
Ross was not the first TV presenter to consider diving the Titanic with OceanGate, only to pull out over safety concerns.
Josh Gates, a veteran explorer and host of Expedition Unknown on Discovery+, said he turned down the chance to film on the doomed Titan submersible.
The presenter this week tweeted he had decided to reject the opportunity to film in 2021 because the vessel “did not perform well” during a test dive.
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He tweeted: "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."
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