Josh Gad Looks Back on 'Gay LeFou' Controversy in New Memoir

"Beauty and the Beast" actor Josh Gad looks back on the wildly outsized controversy that erupted when his character, LeFou, was seen dancing for all of two seconds in 2017's live-action remake of the classic Disney animated movie.

"In his new memoir, 'In Gad We Trust,' the 'Frozen' actor opens up" about the "intense public backlash" that rumors about a "gay Disney moment" in the film sparked, Entertainment Weekly reports.

EW goes on to relay that "Gad claims he 'never once' played the faithful servant to the arrogant Gaston (Luke Evans) as gay, and that the 'sweet and innocuous moment' was taken wildly out of context."

In the memoir, EW relays, Gad recalls that "I for one certainly didn't exactly feel like LeFou was who the queer community had been wistfully waiting for."

The actor goes on to quip, "I can't quite imagine a Pride celebration in honor of the 'cinematic watershed moment' involving a quasi-villainous Disney sidekick dancing with a man for half a second. I mean, if I were gay, I'm sure I'd be pissed."

If there were some in the general viewing public who chafed at the notion that a Disney character might have a non-heterosexual orientation, gay audiences were thrilled at the notion of LeFou – a comedic second fiddle to Luke Evans' strapping Gascon, and clearly an admirer of Gascon – being a member of the queer community.

Gad recalls in his memoir that he was involved in a dialogue with director Bill Condon and the film's screenwriters, Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos, about "the specific nature of LeFou's devotion to Gaston."

Specifically, he writes, "we tried to distinguish whether or not LeFou loved Gaston or was in love with Gaston."

Rather than romantic love, Gad conveyed, the consensus was that "LeFou was truly in awe of Gaston, and that was not driven by any sexual desire whatsoever but rather a deep-seated love, appreciation, and belief in this person he had served alongside in battle for many years."

Even so, the director – together with the "choreography team," EW noted – came up with the idea of a glimpse of LeFou dancing with another man during a celebratory moment. What Gad thought was "harmless" and "a fun blink-and-you'll-miss-it little beat" became an occasion for pearl-clutching and hyperventilating among some.

Condon himself fanned the flames with an interview in which he told gay publication Attitude that "LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston," and made reference to "a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie."

Gad, too, teased the gay angle while discussing the never-realized prequel TV series that would have followed the adventures of Gascon and LeFou apart from the movie.

"You're going to have to tune in when this show airs to see what we're working up," Gad told Variety's "Just for Variety" podcast in 2021, "but in the process of working on it, we're asking ourselves every relevant question about these characters and endeavoring to do right by them and by this world."

The rage and panic around the fleeting dance moment led to "boycotts across the United States," EW noted, and the film "was banned in several countries abroad" – a remarkable heavy-handed response for such a brief, not to mention ambiguous, moment.

In his memoir, EW relayed, Gad pinpointed the way the moment was talked about by those associated with the film. "Had the audience defined it as a sweet exclusively gay moment, I would have been delighted!" EW quoted from the memoir. "But the second we pointed it out and seemingly congratulated ourselves, we had invited hell and fury."

Still, years after the gay panic around those two celluloid seconds, Gad suggested in comments to UK newspaper the Independent that the "gay moment" Condon had been talking about was not, in fact, the glimpse of LeFou dancing with another man. He did not say if there were concrete ideas for such a moment, but he did allow, "I don't think we did justice to what a real gay character in a Disney film should be."

Moreover, the actor said, "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."

Though the moment is still discussed to this day, at the time, Gad points out, audiences who went into the theater to see the much-ballyhooed "gay moment" found the actual moment to be somewhat anticlimactic.

"Everyone looked at each other and said: 'Wait, that's it? That's what all the fuss was about?'" the actor writes in his memoir.

And audiences there were; while some couldn't get past the idea of a "gay moment" in a Disney film, most moviegoers didn't so much as pause on their way to the box office. EW noted that the film did a booming business, with a showing in excess of a billion dollars.

So much for the "gay for Gaston" fantasy. But what was up, exactly, between Cogsworth the clock (Ian McKellen) and Lumière the candlestick (Ewan McGregor)...?