Josh Gad Admits Beauty and the Beast Remake 'Didn't Go Far Enough' with Gay Character's Storyline
Disney
Josh Gad thinks his Disney character's LGBTQ reveal should've been more substantial.
In the 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast remake, Gad played LeFou, Gaston's sidekick whom director Bill Condon dubbed as Disney's first-ever openly gay character, telling Attitude magazine at the time that the character would have a "nice, exclusively gay moment."
That moment turned out to be a blink-and-you-miss-it instance where LeFou dances with another man in a crowded ballroom. Gad recently told The Independent that, looking back, that moment wasn't significant enough in his mind.
"We didn't go far enough to warrant accolades. We didn't go far enough to say, 'Look how brave we are.' My regret in what happened is that it became 'Disney's first explicitly gay moment' and it was never intended to be that," said Gad, 41. "It was never intended to be a moment that we should laud ourselves for, because frankly I don't think we did justice to what a real gay character in a Disney film should be."
"That was not LeFou. If we're going to pat ourselves on the back, then damn it we should have gone further with that," he continued. "Everybody deserves an opportunity to see themselves onscreen, and I don't think we've done enough — and I certainly haven't done enough to do that."
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In his Attitude interview, Condon said, "LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston. He's confused about what he wants. It's somebody who's just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh makes something really subtle and delicious out of it."
"That's what has its payoff at the end, which I don't want to give away," Condon added at the time. "But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie."
The inclusion of the brief moment in the hit movie sparked some controversy at the time, with some movie theaters refusing to play the film. In 2017, Gad told PEOPLE that Beauty and the Beast is about "inclusiveness" and "one that has something to offer everyone."
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"There is so much fear out there of that which we don't understand that which we don't know," he added. "And you have a character in Gaston who uses his charm offensive to whip other people into a frenzy to go and attack somebody they've never met. Somebody that's different. Somebody that only represents a danger because [Gaston] says that he represents a danger."
"I think that that theme is as relevant today as it was when Beauty and the Beast was first written 300 years ago. So that's what I hope people take from it," added Gad.
Gad and Luke Evans were set to reprise their roles as LeFou and Gaston in a Disney+ prequel series that was already in pre-production when it was reportedly "delayed indefinitely" last month after facing creative and scheduling issues, according to The Wrap. Disney+ did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.