Ridley Scott has said Denzel Washington‘s claim that a same-sex kiss got cut from Gladiator 2 is “bullshit”.
It comes after Washington, who portrays Macrinus in the sequel to the 2000 blockbuster, told Gayety, he kissed a male co-star in a since-deleted moment.
He said: I actually kissed a man in the film but they took it out. They cut it. I think they got chicken.
“I kissed a guy full on the lips and they, I guess they weren’t ready for that yet,” he added, before joking that in the sequence he “killed him about five minutes later”, describing it as a “kiss of death.”
But at the recent Hollywood premiere of the movie, Scott told Variety: “No that’s bullshit. They never did. They acted the moment – it didn’t happen.”
Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal, seen here with Ridley Scott, both star in ‘Gladiator 2’. CREDIT: Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/WireImage via Getty Images
Washington has also since rolled back his comments, now saying: “It really is much ado about nothing. They’re making more of it than it was. I kissed him on his hands, I gave him a peck and I killed him.”
Washington’s same-sex kiss wasn’t the only one that was cut from the film. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, fellow Gladiator 2 star Paul Mescal shared that a forehead kiss between him and Pedro Pascal didn’t make the cut either.
Reviewing Gladiator 2, NME‘s Alex Flood awarded the movie three stars and said: “If you loved Gladiator, it’s odds-on you’ll enjoy this too. It’s got all of the same exciting bits – swordfighting, rousing speeches, nasty poshos getting what they deserve.
“The problem is that’s all it gives you. You want to feel like you’re watching Maximus lift off his helmet and deliver that iconic monologue for the first time again. You want the thrill of a core memory being unlocked. You want to know you’ll be quoting Mescal’s lines to your mates in the pub for the next 10 years. Gladiator 2, piously respectful as it is, can only offer a faded memory of that experience. There was a dream that was Rome – and this is kind of it.”
The film’s concurrent release with Wicked in the US has prompted some to dub the phenomenon Glicked, in reference to last year’s Barbenheimer.
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