Josh Gad opened up about a controversy surrounding sexuality that hovered over his performance as LeFou in the 2017 live-action Disney film Beauty and the Beast.
The 43-year-old actor’s character was pals with the Gaston character played by Luke Evans in the motion picture, which also featured Emma Watson, Dan Stevens and Kevin Kline, and was directed by Bill Condon.
Condon, promoting the film with the outlet Attitude in 2017, said moviegoers would finally get to see ‘a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie,’ but it turned out to be a brief sequence in which Gad’s LeFou was seen dancing with a man.
‘I mean, if I were gay, I’m sure I’d be pissed,’ Gad said of the public’s reaction to the scene in his new book In Gad We Trust, Entertainment Weekly reported after publishing excerpts from the book, which was released Tuesday.
The Hollywood, Florida native said in the book he felt that the character was too peripheral and the scene too brief to live up the director’s hype.
‘I for one certainly didn’t exactly feel like LeFou was who the queer community had been wistfully waiting for,’ said Gad, who has been wed to wife Ida Darvish since 2008. ‘I can’t quite imagine a Pride celebration in honor of the “cinematic watershed moment” involving a quasi-villainous Disney sidekick dancing with a man for half a second.’
Gad, who provides the voice of Olaf in the Frozen films, detailed a ‘casual (but ultimately seismic) conversation’ he had with Condon and screenwriters Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos during production of the Disney film.
The chat was ‘about the specific nature of LeFou’s devotion to Gaston,’ Gad said, adding that ‘in the course of our discussions, we tried to distinguish whether or not LeFou loved Gaston or was in love with Gaston.’
The collaborators ‘ultimately landed on the side of LeFou was truly in awe of Gaston, and that was not driven by any sexual desire whatsoever but rather a deep-seated love, appreciation, and belief in this person he had served alongside in battle for many years,’ Gad said in the book.
The group came to the consensus that LeFou’s sexual preferences was a critical aspect ‘to really explore in a random comedic character in the film.’
‘Because I was a side character, I didn’t want to suddenly throw the weight of sexuality on this character that in no way was driving the film, but the moment (as described to me) seemed harmless enough – a fun blink-and-you’ll-miss-it little beat.’
He said of the reaction, ‘Everyone looked at each other and said: “Wait, that’s it? That’s what all the fuss was about?”‘
Gad made clear that amid production of the film, it was not articulated to him that the character’s sexuality was going to be a keynote aspect of the movie.
‘Never once was the moment in this film described to me as something that we were going to hang a lantern on and pat ourselves on the back for,’ Gad wrote. ‘In fact, if it had, I never would have agreed to the seemingly sweet and innocuous moment. It was both too little and not enough to be anything more than it was.’
Condon said in the March 2017 interview, ‘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… and Josh makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that’s what has its payoff at the end, which I don’t want to give away.’
Condon, who is openly gay, ‘felt awful’ about the publicity backlash about his remarks, Gad said in the book, as ‘nobody wanted to discuss anything’ about it sans the ‘exclusively gay moment.’
Gad, who also appeared in The Book of Mormon on Broadway, said he ‘would have been delighted’ if ‘the audience defined it as a sweet exclusively gay moment,’ but Condon’s hype of the moment set the bar too high.
‘The second we pointed it out and seemingly congratulated ourselves,’ Gad said, ‘we had invited hell and fury.’
The film was a hit at the box office upon its March 2017 release, earning more than $1.26 billion worldwide, including $504 million in domestic revenue, from a $300 million budget.
It also received a pair of Oscar nods in 2018, for Best Achievement in Costume Design and Best Achievement in Production Design.
