Josh Gad is still upset about Disney making Beauty and the Beast’s ‘Exclusively Gay Moment’ a big deal

We’ve come a long way since Disney’s first “exclusively gay moment,” when the studio made a big deal about LeFou in its live-action Beauty and the Beast— mostly in a depressingly large circle, now we’re back to the House of Mouse cutting LGBTQ+ storylines out of its media to appeal to conservative parents again. But now almost eight years later, the star at the center of the back-slapping furor is speaking out about how shocked he was to see Disney blow it out of proportion.

“I certainly didn’t feel like LeFou was what the queer community had been longing for,” Josh Gad said of his role as LeFou in the film, writing in his new memoir. I Gad We Trust (via Weekly entertainment). “I can’t quite imagine a Pride celebration honoring the ‘watershed cinematic moment’ involving a quasi-villainous Disney sidekick dancing with a man for half a second. I mean, if I was gay, I’m sure I’d be mad.”

And yet, that’s essentially what Disney tried to do back in 2017, where Beauty and the Beast‘s director Bill Condon teased the moment — in which LeFou dances with a male partner during a climactic celebratory sequence in the film — as a big step for Disney’s on-screen LGBTQ+ efforts, describing it (now infamously) as an “exclusively gay moment” in an interview with Attitude. But according to Gad, the moment was hardly discussed on set as an explicitly conscious moment, and was never meant to be taken as more than a silent nod.

“Because I was a supporting character, I didn’t want to suddenly throw the weight of sexuality on this character, which in no way drove the film,” writes Gad. “But the moment (as described to me) seemed harmless enough — a funny blink — and you’ll miss that little beat.”

Instead, Condon’s framing of the moment turned it into a media firestorm, with bigots enraged at the thought of two men dancing together (something that certainly has never happened in a Disney film before) and the studio itself eagerly capitalizing on their ability to have a little bit of queer representation on the big screen. It also wouldn’t be the first time over the next few years that Disney apparently managed to slip that it was making its “first openly gay character” for several press cycles, even though the studio and its major subsidiaries barely made any strides with queer characters and their presence beyond these one-off recognitions.

“Had the audience defined it as a cute exclusively gay moment, I would have been happy,” Gad concludes, “but the second we pointed it out and seemingly congratulated ourselves, we’d invited hell and fury.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same – although Disney is now inviting hell and fury on its own cowardice, more than anything else.

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