Beauty & The Beast To Feature Disney’s First-Ever Gay Character
It has been revealed today that Josh Gad’s character, LeFou, in the live action version of Beauty and the Beast is gay.
The movie has been adjusted from the original animated classic and will be Disney’s first-ever LGBTQ character.
“LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston,” director Bill Condon told Attitude magazine. “He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. 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.”
Beauty and the Beast also stars Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Kevin Kline, Emma Thompson, Ian McKellen, Ewan McGregor, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Audra McDonald and Stanley Tucci and will be in cinemas on March 17th.
I want to be more positive about this, but an “openly” gay villain isn’t exactly a revolutionary step up from the many “coded” gay villains in past Disney films. Hopefully LeFou gets an opportunity to atone for helping the villainous Gaston. Or maybe both Gaston and LeFou can be redeemed. After all, Gaston’s toxic masculinity always seemed like a cover for something else and that something else could very well be his true feelings for LeFou.