~ June, 2021 ~ In a recent interview about their DC Universe series, the creators of HBO Max‘s Harley Quinn opened up about a scrapped sex scene. The adult animated series, which follows the newly single Harley Quinn (Kaley Cuoco), was forced to cut the scene after requests from DC. While talking with Variety, co-creator Justin Halpern discussed the differences between writing for heroes versus villains on the series.
“It’s incredibly gratifying and free to be using characters that are considered villains because you just have so much more leeway,” Halpern said.
The Harley Quinn creator then went on to describe an oral sex scene between two heroes that he was forced to remove, suggesting that if they were villains instead, the scene would’ve survived the cut.
“A perfect example of that is in this third season of Harley [when] we had a moment where Batman was going down on Catwoman,” Halpern continued. “And DC was like, ‘You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot do that.’ They’re like, ‘Heroes don’t do that.’”
But Halpern wasn’t ready to scrap the scene just yet — “heroes don’t do that” was not a viable excuse, in his book. Still, DC persisted, urging the Harley Quinn team to chop the scene from the final cut.
“So, we said, ‘Are you saying heroes are just selfish lovers?’” Halpern joked. “They were like, ‘No, it’s that we sell consumer toys for heroes. It’s hard to sell a toy if Batman is also going down on someone.’”
But the article goes on to give some credit to DC. Halpern and co-creator Patrick Schumacker say that the company “has been remarkably supportive of their series and has allowed them to push the envelope numerous times.” And yet, Batman and Catwoman have yet to engage in any canoodling as Halpern once suggested they might.
Harley Quinn is set to debut its third season on HBO Max later this year, with or without the aforementioned scene.
A version of this article originally appeared here on decider.com
