The existing film features a brilliant Mercutio (played with electric, androgynous energy by John McEnery). His Queen Mab speech, delivered as a manic, semi-drunken rant before the Capulet ball, is a highlight. However, those who have pored over the original shooting script know there was another Queen Mab speech earlier in the film.
But the film that audiences fell in love with—a tight, lyrical 138 minutes—was not the film Zeffirelli originally shot. Like most great epics, the cutting room floor of the Cinecittà Studios in Rome was littered with reels of celluloid that never saw the light of day. These deleted scenes, largely absent from even the most comprehensive home video releases, promise a deeper, rawer, and more textured version of a story we thought we knew.
Decades after release, lead actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting filed a lawsuit (later dismissed) regarding the . They alleged they were filmed in the nude after being promised they would wear flesh-colored undergarments. While not "deleted" from the final film, the behind-the-scenes dispute highlights how different the filming process was from what the young actors originally expected. Rumors and Missing Evidence
Olivia Hussey, now in her 70s, has stated that she possesses a bootleg VHS copy of the kitchen scenes, given to her by Zeffirelli himself. “It’s in a box in my garage in Los Angeles,” she told a fan at a 2019 convention. “I keep meaning to digitize it.”
While there is no official release of deleted scenes for Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968), film historians and fans have pieced together references to lost or unfilmed material. Here’s a review of what’s known about these “deleted scenes” and their significance.
An early plan or scene involved introducing Tybalt in bed with a girl, showing him leaping up to join the opening street brawl, though this was ultimately streamlined to his arrival at the marketplace.
