Josh Gad Is Still Mortified Over Disney Making Beauty and the Beast‘s ‘Exclusively Gay Moment’ a Big Deal

We’ve travel a agelong mode since Disney’s first “exclusively cheery moment” erstwhile the workplace made a large to-do astir LeFou successful its live-action Beauty and the Beast—mostly successful a depressingly large ol’ circle, present we’re backmost to the House of Mouse cutting LGBTQ+ storylines retired of its media to entreaty to blimpish parents again. But present astir 8 years later, the prima astatine the halfway of that back-patting furor is speaking retired connected conscionable however shocked helium was to spot Disney stroke it retired of proportion.

“I for 1 surely didn’t precisely consciousness similar LeFou was who the queer assemblage had been wistfully waiting for,” Josh Gad said of his relation arsenic LeFou successful the film, penning successful his caller memoir In Gad We Trust (via Entertainment Weekly). “I can’t rather ideate a Pride solemnisation successful grant of the ‘cinematic watershed moment’ involving a quasi-villainous Disney sidekick dancing with a antheral for fractional a second. I mean, if I were gay, I’m definite I’d beryllium pissed.”

And yet, that’s fundamentally what Disney tried to bash backmost successful 2017, when Beauty and the Beast‘s manager Bill Condon teased the moment—where LeFou dances with a antheral spouse during a climactic celebratory series successful the film—into a large measurement for Disney’s on-screen LGBTQ+ efforts, describing it (now infamously) arsenic an “exclusively cheery moment” successful an interrogation with Attitude. But according to Gad, the infinitesimal had hardly been discussed on-set arsenic an explicitly deliberate moment, and was ne'er intended to beryllium seen arsenic much than a quiescent nod.

“Because I was a broadside character, I didn’t privation to abruptly propulsion the value of sexuality connected this quality that successful nary mode was driving the film,” Gad writes. “But the infinitesimal (as described to me) seemed harmless enough—a amusive blink-and-you’ll-miss-it small beat.”

Instead, Condon’s framing of the infinitesimal turned it into a media firestorm, with bigots furious astatine the thought of 2 men dancing unneurotic (a happening that’s surely ne'er happened successful a Disney movie before) and the workplace itself to eagerly capitalize connected being capable to person a tiny speck of queer practice connected the large screen. It wouldn’t beryllium the archetypal clip either implicit the adjacent fewer years, arsenic Disney seemingly managed to regurgitate that it was doing its “first openly cheery character” for aggregate property cycles, adjacent arsenic the workplace and its large subsidiaries barely took steps with queer characters and their beingness beyond these throwaway acknowledgements.

“Had the assemblage defined it arsenic a saccharine exclusively cheery moment, I would person been delighted,” Gad concludes, “but the 2nd we pointed it retired and seemingly congratulated ourselves, we had invited hellhole and fury.”

The much things change, the much they enactment the same—although present Disney is inviting the hellhole and fury for its ain cowardice, much than thing else.

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