how far i'll go

Josh Gad Says LeFou’s Exclusively Gay Moment ‘Didn’t Go Far Enough’

Photo: Hubert Boesl/picture alliance via Getty Images

Remember the so-called “exclusively gay moment” in Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast that ended up being more of an elusively gay moment? So does Josh Gad, and he seems to feel bad about it. “We didn’t go far enough to warrant accolades,” Gad, who played LeFou in the 2017 film, told The Independent. “We didn’t go far enough to say, ‘Look how brave we are.’ My regret in what happened is that it became ‘Disney’s first explicitly gay moment,’ and it was never intended to be that.” The brief scene that director Bill Condon described as “exclusively gay” lasts for maybe two seconds and comes at the end of the movie. During a group celebration in which many people are dancing, LeFou dances with a man. “I don’t think we did justice to what a real gay character in a Disney film should be,” Gad said. “That was not LeFou. If we’re going to pat ourselves on the back, then damn it, we should have gone further with that. Everybody deserves an opportunity to see themselves on screen, and I don’t think we’ve done enough — and I certainly haven’t done enough to do that.” Perhaps that’s why he was so upset the Beauty and the Beast Disney+ prequel series got scrapped.

Exclusively Gay LeFou ‘Didn’t Go Far Enough,’ Says Josh Gad