Actor says live-action ‘Beauty and the Beast’ didn’t deepen gay character

Five years after the premiere of the live-action ‘Beauty and the Beast’, actor Josh Gad revealed to the website The Independent that his character LeFou, a sidekick to the villain Gaston, did not have his sexuality well explored.

For Olaf’s voice actor, the Disney film didn’t go “far enough” in its approach to the gay character. At the time of filming, he says, director Bill Condon considered the moment when the character dances with another man at the end of the plot to be innovative.

“My regret about Disney’s ‘first explicitly gay moment’ is that it was never intended to be what it was. It was never intended to be a moment we should praise ourselves for, because frankly, I don’t think we’ve done justice to what a character is. gay in a Disney movie should be.”

Even so, the director stated that, at the time of release, a cinema refused to show the scene and received some threats from countries that wanted to censor the film.

The actor also revealed in the interview that he was developing a series for Disney+ about LeFou and Gaston (Luke Evans), but the studio canceled production, without making it clear whether LeFou’s sexuality would have been better explored.

“We tried to make it work, but in the end it wasn’t supposed to happen… for now,” he said. “These characters and this story will exist, but sometimes the best intentions and reality conflict and there is nothing that can be done.”