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The Scene That Harley Quinn’s Showrunners Were Shocked Made The Cut
Yes, we’re talking about the Court of Owls orgy.
The co-creators and co-showrunners of Harley Quinn weren’t afraid to push the envelope with their super queer, super amazing series in the first two seasons — and they remained true to that ethos in season three. However, there was one scene that Patrick Schumaker and Justin Halpern were surprised didn’t get cut by the network this time around. We’re talking, of course, about the Court of the Owls orgy scene.
“I thought for sure we were going to get [notes]. It was always kind of a discussion about, you know, ‘Where’s the line? What makes it cross into tastelessness’” But then you end up having our partners at DC being like, ‘No, no, it doesn’t bother us that that character is telling someone to ‘annihilate’ his ‘taint.’ We’re fine with that,’” Schumacher told TVLine.
It’s not surprising that Schumacher had concerns, as there have been moments from previous episodes that ended up on the cutting room floor. The most noteworthy of them was a scene where Batman performs oral sex on Catwoman, which was cut at DC’s instruction. According to Halpern, he was told “‘You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot do that.’ They’re like, ‘Heroes don’t do that,’” at the time. To which he responded, “So, we said, ‘Are you saying heroes are just selfish lovers?’ 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.’”
The Court of Owls orgy wasn’t the only scene the duo was surprised made it to air. “Mine was just a small moment,” Halpern told TVLine. “It had to do with how far they let us take Nora Freeze (Rachel Dratch) this season. There’s a moment in the Swamp Thing (Sam Richardson) episode where Ivy says to Nora, like, ‘You obviously hooked up the Swamp Thing last night, go ask him for this favor.’ And then Nora comes out later and you learn she didn’t ask for the favor because they were f–king in the, like, three minutes that she was gone. It was about letting us take that character and making her this sort of this woman who is making up for all the lost time that she was frozen. I kept waiting for a note to come for that, and it never did. We got to take her as far as we wanted.”
If you’re curious to see those moments and so many more, the first three seasons are available to stream now on HBO Max and the series has been renewed for a fourth season.
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Rachel Shatto, Editor in Chief of PRIDE.com, is an SF Bay Area-based writer, podcaster, and former editor of Curve magazine, where she honed her passion for writing about social justice and sex (and their frequent intersection). Her work has appeared on Dread Central, Elite Daily, Tecca, and Joystiq. She's a GALECA member and she podcasts regularly about horror on the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network. She can’t live without cats, vintage style, video games, drag queens, or the Oxford comma.
Rachel Shatto, Editor in Chief of PRIDE.com, is an SF Bay Area-based writer, podcaster, and former editor of Curve magazine, where she honed her passion for writing about social justice and sex (and their frequent intersection). Her work has appeared on Dread Central, Elite Daily, Tecca, and Joystiq. She's a GALECA member and she podcasts regularly about horror on the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network. She can’t live without cats, vintage style, video games, drag queens, or the Oxford comma.
