Now Ridley Scott says there was never a gay kiss in Gladiator 2

Denzel Washington made a bold claim when he said he’d kissed a man for Gladiator II but “they” were too chicken to include it in the final cut. Washington didn’t clarify who “they” were, but in any case, director Ridley Scott says his actor’s comments were overblown. “No, that’s bullshit,” Scott told Variety at the film’s premiere in Hollywood. “They never did. They acted the moment—it didn’t happen.”

Even Washington now admits the reaction to his comment “really is much ado about nothing” and that another unnamed “they” (the media, perhaps) are “making more of it than it was.” He explained, “I kissed him on his hands, I gave him a peck and I killed him.” 

Perhaps we can interpret these comments together to mean that there was no “gay kiss” in the script; that Washington “acted the moment” and improvised a “peck” in a take that simply didn’t get used, but that a gay kiss getting cut out of homophobic cowardice “didn’t happen.” Connie Nielsen told the outlet at the Governors Awards, “My grieving scene didn’t make it into the film either. It’s not homophobia. It’s just there was no room for it.”

It will not surprise anyone to hear that there was a lot filmed for Gladiator II that didn’t make it up on screen; Scott’s last film, Napoleon, was two and a half hours long, and he boasted that he’d made a “fantastic” version that was two hours longer than that. Understandably, footage is going to end up on the cutting room floor. Also understandably, people will become curious (perhaps even suspicious) when that footage is a gay kiss (and, like, every single scene with Palestinian-Egyptian actor May Calamawy).  

But the Gladiator II team has avoided bringing politics into the conversation, beyond Scott’s vague gesturing to political allegory in the plot. “There was so much stuff that was shot that didn’t make it into the film,” producer Michael Pruss told Variety of the gay kiss. “It was truly a non-event.”