Frozen star Josh Gad said his gay character in Beauty and the Beast didn’t deserve praise.
Back in 2017, Disney released the live-action reboot of the classic animated feature.
Although the film received mixed reviews from critics, many Disney fans praised the queer dance scene between LeFou (Gad) and a random male villager.
Although his sexuality is vaguely alluded to in the film, it was enough to get the movie banned or given an adult-only rating in several countries.
In 2019, Gad told Andy Cohen that he pitched the queer moment to director Bill Condon.
“Here’s what we decided, we decided that LeFou’s happy ending would be to dance with another man, [and] that became such a controversial thing apparently, even though it was three seconds of screen time,” he said.
“We never put a spotlight on it, we never meant to put a spotlight on it. I think the director Bill Condon was very proud of the moment and he made some comments about being very proud of it.”
However, in a recent interview with The Independent, Gad expressed his regret for not going “further” with LeFou’s LGBTQ+ identity.
“We didn’t go far enough to warrant accolades. We didn’t go far enough to say, ‘Look how brave we are,'” he explained.
“My regret in what happened is that it became ‘Disney’s first explicitly gay moment’ and it was never intended to be that.
“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.”
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The 41-year-old went on to say that “everyone deserved to see themselves on screen” and reiterated that they “didn’t do enough” regarding LGBTQ+ representation.
Gad’s recent comments come a few weeks after he announced the postponement of his Beauty and the Beast prequel series.
On 10 February, an unnamed source informed Deadline that the show came to a halt due to “creative reasons.”
They went on to say that the “scripts and original music” were not coming together in the “direction expected or running behind schedule.”
Shortly after the report made headlines, Gad confirmed the indefinite postponement in a series of tweets.
“Sadly, ‘Tis true. We tried to make it all work but under the gun it wasn’t meant to be… for now,” Gad tweeted.
“These characters and this story will live on, but sometimes the best intentions & reality collide & nothing can be done.”
Luke Evans, who was set to reprise his role as Gaston, echoed similar sentiments in his own statement.
“This is a very sad message for us to tweet. We are devastated. Goodbye, for now, from Gaston and LeFou,” he wrote.
Even though the Disney+ series has been put on hold, the source revealed that the company still has intentions to work on the project.
Only time will tell if we’ll see an openly gay LeFou in the Beauty and the Beast TV universe.
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