“Ocean’s 8” is broadcast on TF1 this Sunday, February 5, 2023. Matt Damon was originally supposed to make an appearance in the film as a nod to his character in the saga, but was finally cut during editing…
“Ocean’s 8” can be (re)discovered on TF1 this Sunday, February 5, 2023 at 9:10 p.m. This is a spin-off of the “Ocean’s” saga, carried by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, with Sandra Bullock in the role of Dany Ocean’s sister, fomenting an all-female robbery. Several nods are made to the parent saga in the film, with the guest star presence of George Clooney, Elliott Gould or Shaobo Qin. They were not to be the only ones to appear in “Ocean’s 8”: Matt Damon and Carl Reiner were to embody their respective roles of Linus Caldwell and Saul Bloom in this spin-off. However, they were removed during editing.
We do not know, however, why Matt Damon’s cameo was cut during editing. “Choosing cameos is an eclectic process of seeing if they fit into the story and if the narrative unfolds as it should,” director Gary Ross told The Hollywood Reporter when the film was released in 2018. While one can imagine this to be a screenplay and narrative choice, others believe it to be the consequence of a petition posted online in 2017 asking for his absence from the cast after Damon had controversial remarks about the harassment in the middle of the Harvey Weinstein affair. In 2017, Matt Damon told Business Insider that most men working in Hollywood weren’t stalkers, and he didn’t completely rule out working with men accused of sexual harassment (or worse) and that he wanted to make this decision “on a case-by-case basis”. Did that play into his absence from “Ocean’s 8”? We will probably never have a clear answer.