It’s only the most wonderful time of year when it is actually acceptable to watch fan-favorite Christmas movie Love Actually on repeat.
Richard Curtis’ 2003 Christmas rom-com classic follows the lives of eight loosely interlinked love stories in the run-up to Christmas.
With classic scenes like Hugh Grant as the English Prime Minister dancing around Number 10 Downing Street, to a young Thomas Brodie-Sangster running through the airport to get his girl, this is easily one of my favorite Christmas movies.
But did you know the version we see does not show the movie to its fullest?
There were actually two other storylines that didn’t make the final product.
In a YouTube video, director Richard Curtis, 66, explains how he was “really sorry to lose” the storyline featuring Anne Reid, now 87, and Frances de la Tour, now 78, as a lesbian couple.
Check out the deleted scene here:The missing plotline involves Reid as the headmistress at the school which we see Karen’s - played by Emma Thompson - children attend and put on the nativity, also where Grant and Martine McCutcheon’s characters are exposed kissing on stage.
There was meant to be an initial scene where we meet the “stern” headmistress with Thompson and her son at school, but this was also cut.
“The idea was meant to be that later on in the film, we suddenly fell in with the headmistress, and you realize no matter how unlikely it seems, that any character in life has their own complicated tale of love,” Curtis explained.
In the deleted scene, the headmistress, Reid, heads home to her partner Geraldine, played by de la Tour, who lies ill in bed and asks her, “How is today?” - which the plot is fittingly named after.
The two share some heart-warming moments where they joke about Karen’s son and his Christmas wish to “see people’s farts” and Reid’s “fancy” sausages.
In a later scene, Thompson’s character is giving a speech before the nativity begins, expressing her sympathies to the headmistress, where we then discover that de la Tour’s character, the headmistress's partner, has passed away.
Many Love Actually fans think the deleted scene should have been included, particularly as it would have helped increase the representation of the LGBTQ+ community in the movie.
“Not sure if it’s because I am a lesbian but it would have meant the absolute world to me to see this in the movie. We don’t have enough representation as it is and this short clip on YouTube made me cry,” one user commented.
The overwhelming response to the deleted scene is all positive, with fans even 20 years on wishing it had made the final cut.
Other users complimented the plotline, with one saying: “They should never have cut this! Fantastic lines, wonderful acting and really pulls at your heart strings because it's so ordinary but at the same time extraordinary.”
Despite the loss, I know I will still be watching Love Actually over and over again this year.