Matt Damon reveals he and Ben Affleck almost starred in gay baseball film

Matt Damon has revealed that the world narrowly missed out on him and his Good Will Hunting co-star Ben Affleck creating a gay baseball film together.

While queer sports-related stories are front and centre at the moment following the release of steamy ice hockey romance Heated Rivalry, it seems that the boom could have come a lot sooner, courtesy of Matt Damon.

The actor spoke to Andy Cohen on radio station SiriusXM on 13 January about working with his friend Ben Affleck once again on their new film, The Rip, and let slip that the pair almost made a gay baseball film years before Heated Rivalry became a viral smash.

Cohen probed the actor on how he and Affleck became friends from a young age, as they both grew up near to one another in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Throwing in a sneaky Heated Rivalry reference – and a sly remark about their very close bromance – Cohen joked about whether the two of them played hockey together.

“Little League Baseball. No, we did not play hockey,” Damon chuckled, catching the joke. “I don’t know if you’ve read The Dreyfus Affair. It’s a different sport,” he added.

The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story is a 1993 novel by TV producer Peter Lefcourt, and features a gay love story between two male baseball players playing on the same team.

“When happily married baseball superstar Randy Dreyfus suddenly falls in love with second baseman D. J. Pickett, their relationship has a profound impact on their lives, their families, and their team,” an official synopsis reads.

“You’ve read The Dreyfus Affair?” Cohen asked Damon, sounding somewhat shocked.

“Of course,” Damon responded, before dropping a retrospective bombshell on the fight for LGBTQ+ representation on screen.

“We almost made it years ago. The script just wasn’t good enough but the story is, the book was great,” he confirmed.

Considering the mammoth, Oscar-winning success of Damon and Affleck’s work on Good Will Hunting in 1997, a gay baseball film starring the two of them would have likely been a pretty big success, and therefore a pioneering film for the LGBTQ+ community.

Matt Damon on playing Little League with Ben Affleck when they were kids and the diet for 'THE ODYSSEY'. pic.twitter.com/cQlgp11oBW

— best of matt damon (@damonlibrary) January 13, 2026

Though Damon’s The Dreyfus Affair adaptation never made it to fruition, the actor has dipped his toe (OK, perhaps just a little toe) into the world of queer representation on screen.

In Steven Soderbergh’s 2013 film Behind the Candelabra, he played Liberace’s lover Scott Thorson, while his role as Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe, was also very sexually ambiguous.

While Damon is focussed on The Rip and his upcoming role in Christopher Nolan’s star-studded epic The Odyssey, the world of queer sports media moves on without him: in addition to Heated Rivalry season two, which begins filming this summer, there’s sapphic softball show Slo Pitch on the horizon.

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