BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Contains Disney's First-Ever Gay Character: Josh Gad's LeFou
It's 2017, and while I wish we were at a point in our society in which a gay character in a Disney movie wasn't a big deal, we're not there yet. So it is an actual news story that Josh Gad's comic sidekick character LeFou from the studio's Beauty and the Beast remake will be the first LGBTQ character in a Disney movie. Director Bill Condon revealed the information in an interview with Attitude:
“LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston. He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realising 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.”
Part of the reason for LeFou's sexuality is to pay tribute to the late Howard Ashman, the lyricist of the original film who died from AIDS shortly before the movie hit theaters.
This is a nice step in the right direction for Disney, a notoriously conservative studio that seems to be slowly becoming more diverse and inclusive in its major blockbuster films. Pretty soon this kind of character choice won't make headlines, it'll just be a regular thing that happens all the time — as it should be. But until then, we can give props to the studio for finally doing something that probably should have been done a long time ago.
Beauty and the Beast hits theaters on March 17, 2017.