Josh Gad says he doesn't think 'Beauty and the Beast' did 'justice to what a real gay character in a Disney film should be'

• In 2017, Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" director said the movie had an "exclusively gay moment."
• The moment turned out to be LeFou's character dancing with a man for about two seconds.

Actor Josh Gad, who played Gaston's sidekick LeFou in the "Beauty and the Beast" remake, recently shared that he agrees with some Disney fans who were left disappointed after it was said that his character was a gay man.

In a new interview with The Independent, Gad said he agrees with people who believed the moment was overhyped. LeFou's anticipated "gay moment" in the 2017 film turned out to be two seconds of him dancing with a man.

"We didn't go far enough to warrant accolades," Gad told reporter Alexandra Pollard. "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 hype around LeFou's "gay moment" began just a couple of weeks before the "Beauty and the Beast" remake was set to premiere. The cover for an April 2017 edition of Attitude, a gay lifestyle magazine, touted a world exclusive about "the same-sex surprise" fans would see in the movie.

"LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston," director Bill Condon told Attitude in an interview for the feature. "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."

He continued: "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."

The phrase "exclusively gay moment" became a focus of the movie's changes to the 1991 original animated movie.

But when people flocked to the theater, the only "gay moment" LeFou's character was given came during the movie's ending montage. As dozens of couples dance in a ballroom, exactly two seconds of screen time were given to LeFou taking the hands of a male partner. There was no dialogue in the scene.

"It was never intended to be a moment that we should laud ourselves for, because frankly, I don't think we did justice to what a real gay character in a Disney film should be," Gad told the Independent this week. "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," he added.

Some fans and critics called foul once the movie debuted, saying it fell short of LGBTQ representation. As Insider reporter and critic Jacob Sarkisian wrote in 2020, the LeFou moment was "part of a pattern of Disney shorting LGBTQ communities when it comes to representation."

Gad was set to reprise his role for a Disney+ live-action series that would focus on LeFou and Gaston. Earlier this year, Disney had announced the addition of Rita Ora to the show's cast. But on February 10, The Wrap reported that the series had been "put on hold indefinitely" due to "creative reasons as well as scheduling issues."

The series was developed, executive-produced, and written by Gad along with Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz ("Once Upon a Time"), "each serving as a co-showrunner," according to Disney.

A representative for Gad and Disney did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on the status of the TV show.