We’ve Been Deprived of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s First Onscreen Kiss

Over the years, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have shared a lot of firsts with one another—they wrote their first movie together, won their first Oscar together—and their upcoming movie, The Last Duel, was supposed to contain another milestone: their first onscreen kiss. Don’t go rushing to buy your tickets quite yet, though, because thanks to director Ridley Scott, it didn’t happen.

In the historical drama, set in 14th century France, Damon plays Jean de Carrouges, a French knight who is not too fond of Affleck’s French nobleman, Count Pierre d'Alençon. The actors spoke to Entertainment Tonight about a historically accurate scene where they attend a ceremony and Damon’s character was supposed to kiss everyone on the mouth, including Affleck.

"That would've been our first on screen kiss," Damon said. As Affleck added, though, “it’s going to have to wait” because Scott ditched the scene and opted instead to have Damon kneel in front of Affleck instead of planting one on him. Less queerbaity, of course, but who wouldn’t pay good money to see Damon hate-kiss Affleck?

"Ridley thought it would be distracting, and his instincts are pretty good," Affleck explained, and while he may be right, we don’t think we’ll be able to ever stop thinking about the kiss that could have been. Unfortunately, there isn’t even ditched footage of the smooch, since it never even made it into the final script. But hey, that’s what Wattpad is for.