An aging actress lamented that a gay kissing scene from her 2002 children’s movie was cut out of the final edit, proving that the modern cultural undercurrents have been around in Hollywood a lot longer than people realize.
Former ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ star Sarah Michelle Gellar sat down with Bravo TV’s Andy Cohen and shared that her scripted gay romance, along with other innuendos, had been eliminated in the 2002 film adaption of the Scooby-Doo saga.
Gellar also went on to reveal that they filmed a joke “outing” co-star Freddie Prinze Jr.’s character of Fred as potentially bisexual. If it seems bad now, imagine this happening two decades earlier.
In the 2002 Scooby-Doo film, Gellar played Daphne and Linda Cardellini portrayed Velma. As Gellar told Cohen during the interview, the kiss was actually filmed. Moreover, scriptwriter James Gunn, the Hollywood director who has previously tweeted an affinity for having “little boys’ touch him and made disturbing comments about rape, had actually intended the on-screen romance to include more than just a kiss.
Of Gunn, Fox News reported in 2018 that Gunn had posted two unearthed tweets that ultimately got him fired from a Marvel film project.
“I like when little boys touch me in my silly place,” the director said in a since-deleted tweet. “The best thing about being raped is when you’re done being raped and it’s like ‘whew this feels great, not being raped!’” said another.
“In 2001, Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script. But the studio just kept watering it down and watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) and finally having a boyfriend (the sequel),” Gunn later admitted about the script, as reported by the Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire continued, noting that Gellar corroborated the account and longingly yearned for the cut shot to be released to the public.
Gellar confirmed that vision during the “After Show” portion of Cohen’s “Watch What Happens Live” — saying, “There was a steamy kiss. It got cut. There was an actual kiss between Daphne and Velma that got cut. I feel like the world wants to see it. I don’t know where it is.”
According to Gellar, the entire movie had been pitched to the main actors — also including Matthew Lillard as “Shaggy” — as “less family friendly” than the long-running animated series. And for Gellar, that was a key selling point.
Gellar then explained to Cohen how her character Daphne was supposed to deliver a single line during a heated exchange with the character of Fred, in which, as the Daily Wire said, there would be “ambiguity over [his] sexuality.”
Never mentioned is why any of this would be relevant to the story or appropriate for young viewers.
“There was a great line too that I’ll never forget. Daphne and Fred were having a fight and I yell at him, ‘That ascot makes you look gay!’ I slam the door [at him]. They cut that, too,” Gellar said of the scene. “I think that was the reason I signed onto the movie. It’s something everyone’s thought for a long time. There’s always been an implication about Fred being interested in both parties. It all got cut.”
"*" indicates required fields