[imagesource: Flickr / Ron Cogswell]

The moment it ticks over to December 1, DStv dusts off the ‘ol copy of Love Actually and you can find it playing nearly constantly across the movie channels.

It’s basically eTV’s version of Anaconda.

Chances are you know most of the iconic scenes nearly word for word. What if we told you that one of those famous scenes, featuring Sam, the youngster who falls in love with his American classmate Joanna, was originally very different?

Listen, I only learnt of this yesterday so I’m just as shocked as you. These details from CNET:

2003’s Love Actually, written and directed by Richard Curtis, has a deleted scene that does the rounds annually, revealing a bizarre backstory for one of the main characters…

[Sam] races through the airport to tell [Joanna] how he feels before she returns to the US. In the deleted version of this scene, Sam is shown to be a trained gymnast, who flips through a security gate, cartwheels over luggage and swings down from a second-level walkway like he’s doing an uneven bars routine at the Olympics.

I’m not yanking your chain.

There’s the initial acrobatics, another display just after the 30-second mark, and then the best bit of all in the final 20 seconds:

It is your holiday duty to make sure everyone you know is aware of the deleted subplot in Love Actually where the little boy is a trained gymnast. pic.twitter.com/Za2pzGVn6H

— Patrick Fisackerly (@fisackerly) December 3, 2022

Curtis said that in the original script, Sam was written as a brilliant gymnast. For the deleted scene, the production team had to construct a whole airport terminal complete with isometric bars.

Stunt coordinator Lee Sheward speaking below:

“Although he did apologize to me when I saw him next, Richard Curtis dropped it from the final cut because he said it didn’t really feel like that sort of movie,” Sheward said. “So all the expense, cost of building and shooting it all isn’t in the film!”

Tough call, but the film is better off without this weird display of gymnastic revelry.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who played Sam in the film, is now 32. You can see what he looks like in this trailer for sorts for The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later – A Diane Sawyer Special, which aired last month.

[source:cnet]