There's been a lot of controversy surrounding LeFou, the bouncy, homosexual, Gaston-gushing character that Josh Gad plays in the upcoming live-action adaptation of Disney's animated classic, Beauty and the Beast. Because of his sexual orientation, the film has been banned from showing in one Alabama-based drive-in cinema and is currently facing a lot of scrutiny in Russia where the government bans "gay propaganda."
Now, in an interview with USA Today, Gad reveals how much he feels the backlash has been overblown.
"Too much has probably been made of this entire thing," Gad says. "At a certain point what I want to be talking about is how wonderful, how entertaining, how amazing this movie is for all audiences."
Despite the severity of the backlash, Gad also finds humor in the entire issue, taking time to joke:
"For me, the most controversial part of this movie that nobody's talked about is the fact that my horse in my opinion hates overweight people and threw me off every opportunity that he had."
"(LeFou's humor is derived from cartoon conceits," the star explains. "He has his teeth knocked, out, he's literally thrown across a room by Gaston multiple times, his head is sat on by animals. For me, that's very hard to play."
"I said to Bill, ‘LeFou in the original is dumb as a box. We start from a place of maybe he's dumb as a fox,' meaning he doesn't let on just how much he actually does know and this blind devotion, there's a conscience behind it this time around."
Despite the difficulty of playing a dumb, cartoonish character and facing the backlash against his sexual orientation, Gad seems to be taking everything in stride. We hope that most fans will enjoy his performance when Beauty and the Beast arrives.
Beauty and the Beast premieres on the big screen on March 17, 2017.
Read: Josh Gad's Lefou in Beauty in the Beast is Apparently Gay
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