Sam Neill allegedly had pneumonia before his tragic death.
“It really sucks, actually,” the late actor’s “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” co-star Rima Te Wiata told the New Zealand Herald Monday.
“I think he would be like: ‘For goodness sake, I got over my cancer. And now look, now I get pneumonia. What next?’” the New Zealand actress, 63, added.
“He’s on his big journey now.”
Te Wiata did not disclose additional details about Neill’s alleged illness.
On Monday, the “Jurassic Park” star’s loved ones announced he died. He was 78.
“Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterized his whole life,” his family said in a statement. “The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free.”
Neill’s relatives expressed “their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care,” they added.
“More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”
On Tuesday, the “Peaky Blinders” alum’s ex Laura Tingle said the actor had been “pretty sick” before his passing.
“The bottom line is he’d been fighting various forms of cancer for at least the last five years, intensively,” the journalist, 65, said on “Sydney Mornings.”
“That takes a toll on anybody’s body. He’d had a lot of chemo and a lot of immunotherapy,” she added.
“Thankfully, it had finally cleared him of the blood cancer that he had. But that left him pretty compromised in terms of his immune system. I think his poor old body sort of got a bit exhausted.”
Tingle — who dated Neill from 2018 to 2021 — said the actor had been “sick for the last couple of weeks.”
“Everybody who loved him has been willing him on from near and far, but I think it was just a bit too much to recover from one more time,” she shared.
In April, Neill announced he was cancer-free following his battle with a rare and aggressive form of cancer called angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma.
