Ben Affleck Reveals His Matt Damon Kiss Scene Was Cut From ‘The Last Duel’
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have worked together many a time, but the frequent collaborators have yet to do one thing — share an onscreen kiss. According to Affleck, this was almost a reality in Ridley Scott’s upcoming historical drama The Last Duel. In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Affleck revealed that a deleted scene would have seen his and Damon’s characters locking lips.
There is a scene in The Last Duel where Damon’s Jean de Carrouges kneels in front of Affleck’s Count Pierre d’Alençon as a part of a ceremony, but the action was originally supposed to be a kiss. “In the original actual version of that scene — the way that ceremony actually took place was that you kissed everybody on the mouth,” Affleck recalled to Damon. “And we had that in the script.” When Damon remarked that the scene would have marked their first onscreen kiss, Affleck joked, “It’s going to have to wait.”
After further speculation, Scott decided that a kiss would be too bold of a gesture, and would take audiences out of the period drama. “Ridley thought it would be distracting, and his instincts are pretty good,” Affleck explained. It also made more sense for Damon’s and Affleck’s character relationship to stick to a kneeling pose.
“Yeah the two characters really hate each other and that was really fun,” Damon recalled. “In fact, the scene where I kneel before him, Ben just improvised this thing where I started to say my line and he just interrupted me and goes, ‘Closer.’ And I have to kind of get up and kneel again in front of him. And that was just — he just did that and just kind of blurted that out, and it wasn't in the script.”
The Last Duel, which also stars Jodie Comer and Adam Driver, arrives in theaters on October 15.