Characters from the film Triangle of Sadness.
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Passengers
Carl
Played by: Harris Dickinson
"I do think it's quite crazy how it's such a hard thing to talk about. Money."
A model, as well as Yaya's boyfriend and social media curator.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: A rare male example His modelesque features are unaffected by the rough living they have to resort to in the final act.
- Mr. Fanservice: He's a model, and his good physique is given plenty of focus throughout the film. It's analyzed in the opening model shoot, and he gets plenty of shirtless scenes once he and Yaya get on the boat.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Carl looks visibly guilty when he sees that the crew member he complained about for a petty reason is summarily fired and sent away from the yacht. It turned out to be a form of Nice Job Fixing It, Villain.
- Nice Guy: Played With. He presents himself as affable and mild-mannered, and certainly cows to more forceful personalities, but is quite controlling and manipulative in his own way.
- Sex for Services: He becomes Abigail's boytoy on the island in exchange for favorable treatment.
Yaya
Played by: Charlbi Dean
"I need to know that the person I'm with intends to take care of me. Otherwise I'm wasting my time."
A model and influencer who is more successful than her boyfriend Carl.
- Bad Influencer: Downplayed as she's not a nasty person, but it's clear that her social media influencer side hustle and the luxuries it's provided her have left her painfully self-absorbed. She can't do anything without taking a photograph first, and when a return to civilization is in the cards, instantly assumes Abigail would want to work for her.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Yaya develops a number of angry red blotches on her face while stranded on the island, marring her model-perfect features - but she's still recognizably lovely, and they're gone by the last scene.
- Condescending Compassion: She offers Abigail a job as an assistant once they return to civilization, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the last thing Abigail wants is to go back to a life of menial labor. It's implied that Abigail kills her for it.
- Dissonant Serenity: For much of the movie, she shows anger by smiling and laughing joylessly, even when she's not around other people. It's not until her stranding that she drops the act and really shows her anger.
- Grin of Rage: As with Dissonant Serenity, a big tell that she's really upset is when she gives a practiced Instagrammable smile.
- It's All About Me: Freely admits she's only with Carl for clout.
- Ms. Fanservice: She's a famous model who spends the film in beautiful and often revealing clothing and swimwear. She survives most of the final act in a skimpy minidress despite being in the wilderness.
- Trophy Wife: Yaya mentions that, when she's too old to model anymore, she can become a trophy wife for a rich man. Carl, as a male model, does not have this to fall back on, which generates a good deal of tension between the two of them.
Dimitriy
Played by: Zlatko Burić
"And when you have money, you know, you don't need money to sleep, you understand? Money must not sleep, you know."
A Russian oligarch who made his fortune in fertilizer. He is on the boat with his wife Vera and mistress Ludmilla.
- Big Fun: He's a pudgy old man with an easygoing and jolly personality.
- Conspicuous Consumption: Our intro to the yacht is a top-secret naval mission to drop off a special package via helicopter and diver to deliver goods to the ship. It's Nutella. Dmitry wanted some. He's later rightfully mocked for it.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Dimitry is an amoral, opportunistic ultra-capitalist, but he appears genuinely distraught when his wife Vera's body washes ashore on the island. (He still picks the jewelry off her corpse, though.)
- Rags to Riches: While he's not completely spotless and still indulges in stupid rich-boy antics, Dmitry is possibly the most humanised out of the rich assholes on board, and it's likely because it's heavily implied he used to be a menial worker or farmer (he sold fertiliser) and only got rich because the economics of the time made him rich by being in the right place at the right time. He doesn't mock Carl and Yaya for being influencers who normally couldn't afford the trip, laughs at the guests trying to look fancy, and despite disliking his Communist ideals, goofs around with the Captain.
Jarmo
Played by: Henrik Dorsin
"I'm very rich. Yes, let's not beat around the bush."
An awkward Swedish tech billionaire.
- Rich Boredom: Implied. He recently hit it big by selling his company, but he now has more money than he knows what to do with and very little in the way of companionship to show for it. He first attempts to financially reward Yaya and Ludmilla for being nice to him.
- No Social Skills: He is flabbergasted when two attractive women volunteer to take a photo with him. Even when trying to party with them, he declines Yaya's repeated invitations to dance, feeling too embarrassed.
- Stereotypical Nerd: Jarmo is an extremely socially awkward computer programmer who cannot talk to girls and asks Yaya and Dmitry's mistress to help him post a revenge pic towards someone who ghosted him on his trip.
Therese
Played by: Iris Berben
A wealthy German woman who has been rendered paraplegic and mostly mute from a stroke.
- The Load: She can't walk or speak properly and is thus portrayed as a burden to the others, who have to be reminded to share food and water with her. Even when a vendor finds her on the shore, she is unable to communicate their situation.
- One-Word Vocabulary: As a result of her stroke, she can only repeat 'Uli' (her husband) and 'in den Wolken' ("up in the clouds"). Her husband clarifies she's fully cognizant, it's just that her language centers are damaged. It's implied 'in den Wolken' was the last thing she said right before she had her stroke.
Winston and Clementine
Played by: Oliver Ford Davies (Winston) and Amanda Walker (Clementine)
"Well, our weapons have been employed in upholding democracy all over the world."
An English couple who develop weapons.
- Affably Evil: Winston and Clementine are a perfectly polite, friendly old English couple, sincerely in love with each other, who also happen to own a company that manufactures grenades and land mines - and who speak about a UN ordinance banning land mines as a personal obstacle for them.
- Arms Dealer: Winston and Clementine say that their business is precision manufacturing, but what they manufacture turns out to be hand grenades and other explosive weapons.
- Death by Irony: Winston and Clementine, arms dealers who view themselves as arming defenders of democracy, are faced with the reality of where their weapons end up when Somali pirates toss one of their grenades onto the yacht right next to them.
- Named After Someone Famous: Winston and Clementine, the snooty English arms dealers, share the names of Winston Churchill and his wife.
Crew
Abigail
Played by: Dolly de Leon
"Who am I? In the yacht, cleaning lady. Here, captain."
A Filipino cleaner who proves herself to have strong survival instincts.
- Chekhov's Gunman: She only appears very briefly in the first two acts before becoming the pivotal character of the third.
- Drunk with Power: Abigail, the lower-class toilet cleaner who was decidedly on the bottom of the social ladder under normal circumstances, turns out to be the only one who has any kind of survival skills at all, knowing how to start a fire and fishing with her bare hands, thus giving her power over the other survivors... leading her to gradually become increasingly corrupt, exploitative and abusive. In the end, she proves willing to kill to keep her power, if only for a time.
- Working-Class Hero: Played With. The cleaning lady Abigail is the main character of the third act, and is initially presented as a sympathetic character: the more affluent characters are dismissive of her and take her for granted, even if it's immediately clear that she's got the street smarts that will keep them alive. But once she establishes her authority, she quickly becomes less sympathetic and heroic.
Paula
Played by: Vicki Berlin
"It's always, 'Yes, sir! Yes, ma'am!'"
The cruise's controlling chief steward.
- Boyish Short Hair: Her close-cropped blond hair befits her terse personality and masculine uniform, especially in comparison to the model Yaya and the cleaner Abigail who wear their hair longer.
- Control Freak: Paula displays a need to order people around to suit her tastes. It's justified on the ship since she needs to cover for both the useless, alcoholic captain and the unhelpful first mate, but she persists after they're all shipwrecked.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: She's the chief steward but has to wrangle her ineffectual alcoholic captain as well.
Thomas
Played by: Woody Harrelson
"But you can't be rich and expect the rest of the world to be poor. And while you're swimming in abundance, the rest of the world is drowning in misery. That's not the way it's meant to be."
'The alcoholic captain.- Advertised Extra: Woody Harrelson is front-and-center on the poster and billed alongside the two leads, and gets quite a bit of focus in the trailers and an And Starring credit in the opening, but Thomas is overall a fairly minor character with around ten minutes of screen time, who only appears in the film's second act.
- The Alcoholic: He's too soused to be of much use during the voyage, and leaves much of the day-to-day ship-running to Paula and Darius. Even when things go to shit he's more preoccupied with getting drunk with Dimitriy and talking shit over the intercom.
- The Alleged Boss: Captain Smith spends all his time drinking in his quarters in a bathrobe, leaving his first mate and the chief stew to run the ship. He needs to practically be dragged from his quarters just to attend the captain's dinner.
- AM/FM Characterization: When we first see him, he is playing "The Internationale" on full blast in his cabin, telegraphing his political views very clearly.
- Hypocrisy Nod: He admits that he considers himself a terrible socialist because he gets paid way too much to captain the vessel and doesn't put his money towards the cause.
- Insistent Terminology: He is not a Communist, he's a Marxist.
- Trademark Favorite Food: To solidify his working class status, he prefers a good burger to fine dining.
Nelson
Played by: Jean Christophe Folly
A man who claims to have worked in the engine room.
- Profiling: He is accused of being one of the pirates who attacked the ship because he's black.
