Ewan McGregor Admits He’s Never Seen Original ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ Defends Movie’s Gay Character
Ewan McGregor caught Late Show host Stephen Colbert by surprise when confessed that he's never seen the Disney's 1991 animated movie, Beauty and the Beast.
The 45-year-old actor stars as the beloved candelabra Lumière, aka the Beast's ma?tre d, in Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures' live-action adaptation of the musical, and while his co-star, Emma Watson, has watched the original movie lots of times, he somehow never got around to seeing the classic cartoon.
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"I have children. You have four daughters, right? Surely you knew this musical before you took the job, right?" Colbert asked McGregor, whose youngest daughter is six and his eldest is 21. "How could you possibly avoid Disney? How did you escape from the black hole that is 'Be Our Guest?'"
"I have never seen it, the original. Is it good?" the Scottish star quipped. "It's not because I didn't want to. It's just...I don't know. It wasn't one that they watched, I guess."
McGregor added that he thinks not seeing the movie may have ultimately been to his benefit. "It was quite handy, in a way, because when you're going to play a part that's so well known, it's quite good if you don't know it so it can be yours," he explained. "I didn't have to try and sound like the guy who did it in the cartoon in the '90s."
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Colbert also inquired about Josh Gad's character, LeFou, in the film, who director Bill Condon recently described in an interview as an "exclusively gay character."
"There's a lot of gay sex in this cartoon -- and if you live anywhere near Alabama, you should not go and see this film," McGregor said sarcastically. "What would Jesus think?"
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"He's a gay character!" he exclaimed. "It's 2017, for f**k's sake!"
In a recent interview with ET, Condon spoke further about Gad's character. "It's sort of, like, a first gay moment. He's fluid, you know what I mean?" the director explained. "LeFou in the original, why else does he hang out and be a human punching bag for Gaston? He must be a little confused about his feelings, you know? But I don't want that to seem like a heavy-handed thing."
"The movie is a celebration, at the end of the day, of love," he added. "And we have very many varieties of it in moments at the end."
Beauty and the Beast debuts in theaters on Friday.
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