Actor Josh Gad has recently spoken about his role as LeFou in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and made reference to the “weird controversy” that it elicited. Gad was taking about his character LeFou being gay.
Frozen 2, Gad also played the role of Gaston’s trusty sidekick in the 2017 live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. Though it wasn’t overt, Lefou’s sexuality was hinted at in the remake, in a way that wasn’t so obvious in the animation of the same title and it was this that Gad has made reference to.
Speaking on Andy Cohen’s Sirius XM radio show and reported in This then gave greater context to the role of Lefou and how he should be played. When pressed by Cohen about this direction for the character Gad has this to say:
Here’s what we decided, we decided that LeFou’s happy ending would be to dance with another man… It was my pitch, that’s how I really wanted the movie to end… I was so amazed they let us do it… That became such a controversial thing, apparently, even though it was only three seconds of screen time. We never put a spotlight on it. We never meant to put a spotlight on it. It became a conflated, weird controversy.
Gad says that Bill Condon, the film’s director, was complexly on-board with the decision, one which Gad applauded. Though it may seem odd in contemporary society that the sexuality of a character would even be an issue, the actor did recognize that this could be seen as a risk by Disney, one which both he and his director was more than willing to take, and, one which the director was very proud of.
Though not intentionally intending to "shine a spotlight"on the issue, and though it was only a brief moment of screen time, it still became controversial, with some movie theaters in the US refusing to show the film due to LeFou’s sexuality. He went on to say that a lot more work needs to go into making films that show equal representation, applauding Disney and saying that that he hoped they would carry on finding more ways to do this.
Beauty and the Beast grossed over $1.2 billion worldwide at the box office ing films such as for "baiting" LGBTQ topics by paying them lip service, but forgoing the opportunity to explore the ideas fully. Gad's comments regarding his role as LeFou will no doubt add to the conversation about diverse representation in Disney and the industry at large.
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Source: Collider
