“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” is to (re) discover 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 a 100% female robbery. Several nods are made to the mother saga in the film, with the presence as guest stars of George Clooney, Elliott Gould or Shaobo Qin. They should not be the only ones to appear in “Ocean’s 8”: Matt Damon and Carl Reiner were to play 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 had indeed explained to Business Insider that most men working in Hollywood weren’t stalkers and that he didn’t totally rule out the idea of working with men accused of sexual harassment (or worse) and that he wanted to make that decision “just in case per case”. Did that play into his absence from “Ocean’s 8”? We will probably never have a clear answer.