The tale as old as time has gotten a 21st-century update.
The live-action Beauty and the Beast film will feature Disney’s first-ever gay character: Gaston’s right-hand man LeFou, played by Josh Gad.
“LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston,” director Bill Condon revealed in Attitude’s April issue. “He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings.”
On Twitter Tuesday, February 28, Gad, 36, wrote that he’s “beyond proud” to take on the history-making role. And Condon is happy to have him.
“And Josh makes something really subtle and delicious out of it,” he continued to the magazine. “And that’s what has its payoff at the end, which I don’t want to give away. But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.”
Fans got their first look at Gad in action as LeFou in a clip from the film’s song “Gaston,” which Disney released earlier this week. As the movie’s villain, played by Luke Evans, sprawls out and basks in his praise, Gad steals the scene, jumping on tables and hopping around the tavern as he boosts his friend’s ego.
Gad called bringing Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s song to life a “dream come true” when speaking with the Hollywood News last week, and seemed to tease his character’s sexuality ahead of the reveal, as well as the “exclusively gay moment.”
“There’s some surprising elements to this LeFou,” Gad said at Beauty and the Beast’s London premiere February 23. “Everything isn’t what it first appears to be. And he’s got a journey along the way that I think causes him to ask questions.”
Beauty and the Beast hits theaters March 17.
