John Cleese, the comedian behind the revival of Monty Python's Life of Brian stage show, has revealed that an original scene featuring a character who declares their right to have a baby and be called Loretta is set to be cut out.
According to Spiked, during the read-through of the script last month, Cleese was told by performers that the scene could not be included in the show. In the background, the character Stan claims he wants to be a woman because he "wants to have babies," and that it's "every man's right to have babies if he wants them."
Cleese's character Reg pushes back, telling Stan, "But you can't have babies." Stan responds, "Don't you oppress me." Reg then points out that Stan doesn't "have a womb," concluding that it's "symbolic of his struggle against reality."
Cleese has previously spoken out about the current climate for comedians, stating that they no longer have the freedom to be funny. "I think it's particularly worrying at the moment because you can only create in an atmosphere of freedom where you're not checking everything you say critically before you move on," he said in July 2022.
"A lot of comedians now are sitting there and when they think of something, they say something like, 'Can I get away with it? I don't think so. So and so got into trouble, and he said that, oh, she said that.' You see what I mean? And that's the death of creativity."
In recent years, making jokes about the transgender community has become controversial. Comedian Chrissie Mayr was heckled, and a group of women stormed out of the comedy club after she made a joke about transgender TikToker Dylan Mulvayney.
Similarly, activists claimed that Dave Chappelle was "punching down" when he made jokes supposedly at the expense of trans-identifying people. At one point, activists staged a protest outside of Netflix to get his specials removed from the platform. He was also assaulted on stage last year by a man offended by his jokes. "I wanted him to know that next time, he should consider first running his material by people it could affect," the man said.
Monty Python's Life of Brian is a film from 1979, listed in the IMDB top 250 movies with a rating of 8.0 out of 10.
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