Released just two years past the turn of the millennium, the live-action Scooby-Doo films capture an especially absurd moment in time: an era not far before streaming but a few decades after the advent of VHS tapes, one of strange, off-colour CGI, outrageously slay fashion, and the Kids Choice Award for their ‘Favourite Fart in a Movie’. Over 20 years after the premiere of Scooby-Doo: The Movie, audiences can look back fondly at the campy, body-swapping antics of Scooby and the gang on the dubious-sounding Spooky Island – but what if we told you it all could have been much, much camper, and much, much gayer?
Reflecting on her role as Daphne in a recent interview, Sarah Michelle Gellar has now revealed that, in an original cut of the 2002 movie, a “steamy kiss” took place between her character and Linda Cardellini’s Velma. When asked about a potential “relationship on the side” between the pair, SMG replied: “I don’t know about a relationship on the side, but there was a steamy… I mean, I said it was steamy, but they probably didn’t think it was – hence it was cut.” While a romance between Velma and Daphne has been vaguely hinted at across numerous Scooby-Doo properties over the years, it’s only ever been subtextual.
“There was an actual kiss between Daphne and Velma that got cut,” she continued. “I feel like the world wants to see it. But I don’t know where it is.” This is far from the first time the fabled R-rated Scooby-Doo cut has come up: James Gunn, the film’s director, has been particularly vocal about his misgivings with some of the sacrifices made to maintain the movie’s PG-rating – including deleted stoner jokes and CGI-edited cleavage.
In 2020, the filmmaker tweeted about the ‘family-friendly’ changes made to Linda Cardellini’s character: “In 2001 Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script,” he wrote. “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).” Curse you, bland executives!
Perhaps it’s enough that a canonic Velma-Daphne kiss exists somewhere that’s not the bizarre HBO reboot. Maybe the real LGBTQ+ representation was the weirdly-animated demons we met along the way, or just that one guy in a pleather wrestling costume who gets body-slammed into a tunnel. Who’s to say really?