The forthcoming Beauty and the Beast film will feature the first-ever openly gay Disney character.
Disney’s live-action adaptation – a remake of the 1991 animated film – of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy tale will star Emma Watson in the lead role as Belle, while Dan Stevens will take on the eponymous Beast. The film is set for release on March 17.
It has now been revealed that one particular scene in Beauty and the Beast will see the first-ever coming out of a canon Disney character during a film. Speaking to Attitude, director Bill Condon revealed that the character LeFou – played by Frozen star Josh Gad – will be at the centre of Disney’s debut on-screen “gay moment.”
“LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston,” Condon revealed. “He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings.
“And Josh [Gad] makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that’s what has its pay-off at the end, which I don’t want to give away. But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.”